NS-4HX

Yamaha's NS-4HX has been designed specifically for home theater applications. The bookshelf speaker is a bass-reflex design that can be used for main or effect channels and incorporates a pair of 5" white spruce diaphragm cone woofers and a 1 1/8" aluminum dome tweeter. For improved imaging, the drivers are arranged in a D'Appolito array, with the tweeter and its waveguide horn between the two woofers.

Unlike most homes, movie theaters use sound absorbing materials on walls and ceilings. The result is that the sound reaching your ears is the sound wave produced by the speakers rather than reflected off the walls. Yamaha has created wave guides that greatly reduce reflected sound and increase the proportion of directly generated sound waves reaching your ears. The result is a clear and precise sense of sound direction and placement.

Yamaha engineers considered many materials for horn and driver diaphragm construction. Ultimately, die-cast aluminum was selected for the horn because it provided dialogue clarity with nuanced sound. Canadian White Spruce was chosen for the diaphragm material because it was found to provide the finest accuracy, response speed, and depth - three elements essential to ideal home theater sound.

Other features that contribute to the superb performance of the NS-4HX are the die-cast aluminum driver frames that have three to five times the flex strength of conventional metal or plastic frames and the edge-wound rectangular voice coils that are significantly more efficient than standard, round, voice coil wire.

The speaker is magnetically shielded, so it can be placed on a TV or video monitor without degrading the picture via stray magnetic fields.

Similar to Yamaha's ToP-ART amplifiers, the HX family of speakers utilizes the best internal components, short leads, and direct wiring to achieve the purest signal transmission within the speaker cabinet itself.

To further maintain signal purity, Yamaha provides bi-wiring capability to the HX series speakers. There are separate +/- terminals for the woofer(s) and other driver(s). The separation reduces modulation distortion and better sound quality.

The HX series speakers are enclosed in a natural wood cabinet with mitered corners to provide solid construction with minimal sound diffraction. The Canadian Maple veneer has an open-pore finish, similar to Yamaha's famous pianos.

New grille design and satin grille cloth provide an attractive and acoustically transparent protective cover for the drivers.