I'm looking at getting some extra monitors in the 6 inch speaker and 600 price range that hopefully offer enough accurate low end translation for making electronic music. Are Yamaha HS a good choice or are there better ones available today i should look at?

I appreciate it if replies only from people who actually have, had or use what is recommended, rather than random suggestions.

Thanks

 

I have a pair of HS 5's. over 12 years of use and they sound great.

 

best

 

I have the Yamaha HS-50 M series and the HS 5 they reproduce sound very neutrally.
The Yamaha HS-5 series is the successor to the HS-50M.

For me as a sound designer, the assessment of the bass is wonderful.
If you have a small room, the HS-5 are sufficient; if you have a larger room over 30 qm, go for the HS-8.

 

Last edited: Mar 31, 2026

Here's amir's measurement of the HS 7:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/yamaha-hs7-review-studio-monitor.19761/

Conclusion:

"As modern studio monitors go, the Yamaha HS7 cannot keep up in delivering flat and objectively correct response. It does however deliver on industrial design. With a bit of EQ, the sound is transformed and becomes quite accurate and pleasurable.

Without EQ, I cannot recommend the Yamaha HS7. But with EQ, I would."

I think they are the best looking monitors, but that's just my personal taste.

Did you check Kali In8 or LP8? They got great measurement. It seems like Kali has some of the best value at the moment.

 

Last edited: Mar 31, 2026

You will not get accurate low end on anything that doesn't reproduce it accurately, especially in sub par room, it's one of the most hardest task's to nail down accurately, you have no idea what is really happening bellow certain range and what you hear is influenced by your room. 0.5dB on something like 35hz can shift energy of the whole low end enough, not even mentioning how much of improvement you get tackling 20Hz and bellow, believe me, been there, done that, from 4" to 8" and with sub and all that.

Put that 600 bucks into headphones, it's closest you will get to actually hearing it down bellow and experience cones moving to his entirety, everything else is just guessing game and you will have soul crushing experience taking that music out of your studio and actually being played besides music that have low end that is actually professionally done.

 

A 5" woofer is not going to reproduce anything below 60hz or so accurately, meaning everything underneath your kick drum. The brand and model don't matter, even if some company has marketing that says they do.

You do not need a top of the line subwoofer to get some benefit. Go on Google and search for "subwoofer under $600", and you will see options from Kali, Adam, Yamaha, Mackie, JBL, and all the other manufacturers with subwoofers in your price range. If you get the HS5's (because they are not bad monitors), plan on getting a subwoofer in the near future. If you are making electronic bass-heavy music, you really should have one. Depending on your current monitors, I would probably do that first.

 

Really true I think but maybe not so important considering the fact that most listeners don't have the possibility of reproducing certain frequencies. Certainly I don't understand everything because I only have the NS5s and the beyer 779s but ....
@clone is the sub only a genre thing? it's also a professional level thing that is for sure, but is it necessary?

 

It's not absolutely necessary, and it is a genre thing if you mean all electronic dance music. Another option is even a Subpac, but you have to join a waiting list to buy them new for quite awhile now. It would become a little less necessary if he went to larger woofer nearfield monitors like 10s, 12's, or even higher. Can you get away with HS5's and still mix, yes; but the question is really can you trust what is down there? It's a coin flip on every track wether you got it right, or not.

 

Home listeners maybe, but if you have any desire to be actually played on big PA, most listeners there will have no choice then, plus imagine setup isn't that great to start with, it will sound absolutely horrible. Also in car's, they are really on the verge of breaking even with good produced low end, imagine rattle with something less of that. If you cut too much, it will sound thinner then everything, if you try to aim on similar target loudness, it will break in most horrible way.

It's one of those things, depends really on the genre and one's aim, it's not going to make or break your track, but sometimes it could, depends on your aim and genre.

 

Those HS-5s are not beating these https://www.neumann.com/en-gb/products/headphones/ndh-30-black-edition

 

A lot of people like the HS5 for their sound, I don't get along with them. They have a peak at 1khz and I tend to dial that out from the source material although its not in there, its just the monitor. In combination with the dip at 7-10khz my mixes become sharp and lack mids.

you can see that hump at 1k and the dip in the airband here:

and the test is here:
https://soundref.com/yamaha-hs5-review/

That does not mean they might not be the best for you.
If you like that sound and tend to dial in too much mids and too little airband, then they're a perfect match for you.

 

Uhm... these are headphones!??
"I'm looking for an LG washing machine" "This Siemens dishwasher is better, buy that!" oO

 

How about the HS4? Are they a good starting set or should I get headphone monitors instead?

 

Depends on your goal, what are you trying to do, if you are replacing your cheap small PC speakers, absolutely, if you are buying something that will bring joy of making music, dunno, making music on those speakers kinda sucks ass, so if you want something to vibe with, get something bigger and more fun to work with. If you want something to mix on, then I guess they are usable in conjunction with headphones to check low end.

 

Last edited: Apr 1, 2026

I have definitely experienced this. I have to always che my mix with different shit speakers, but I've never heard my stuff on a big pa so I actually don't know what is there.

 

It's probably more important to be able to differentiate frequencies than to have teeth and bone rattling lows, at least for myself.

 

I have the Yamaha HS5 since more than 10 years and I am happy with them, because they are very precise and well built. I've never had any problem with them. If a track sounds good on them, it sounds good on other speakers.

Other very good and cheaper speakers are from Adam Audio, a young company from Berlin.
https://www.adam-audio.com/

 

How can we recommend different speakers if you don't want random suggestions?

Anyways, if €600 is your absolute limit you could go for the Adam tv range, you could buy their 5",7" or 8" models(or the Kali LP's) which would all have decent bass and then pair them with a mackie cr8s sub, that would be plenty of bass. Sub €1000 there's not really a ton difference between studio monitors in terms of detail, they have slightly different sound profiles but at the end of the day they're cheap monitors. To me, the absolute best system you could get below €1000(if you could stretch your budget by €200) is the Genelec 8010's paired with a sub. The 8010's would give you excellent detail(and impressive bass) down as far as 74hz and then you could get a cheap but decent sub(like the mackie or krkS10G4) to show you what's going on with your boom! I really don't think you can beat that below a grand.

 

For my home i used to own HS-50m about 20 years ago and move to HS-7 when they released. I bought it just because in studio where i was working i already familiar with NS-10. With honesty both dont sound close to our NS-10. Just saying.

For small room, eventho treated room, i wont suggest the Yammie, because of the sub/bass hole is at the back of the speaker, which need to place far away from the wall. If not it will boost overly with wild low freq and not translate accurately. Today we have quite a good small monitor speaker such as IK, back then for a budget we hardly have option.

But since i move to a new house, and have a son, I dont have the luxury of space to build another mixing room. So now when I work from home with headphones only. I think I get a better monitoring with headphone in a small space rather than speaker even tho i spent quite a lot for the room treatment. So I spent all the acoustic treatment budget to a better headphone with better headphone amps, calibrate it, good to go.

But I understand, the excitement to get a speaker, been there, I love browsing thru all the option.

I heard Kali just couple of time, its quite nice as well, it straight away remind me of Focal speaker. Presonus Sceptre also a great speaker, had it for 3 4 years before Covid hit hard. Personally I would avoid Adam, KRK, Tannoy, as their entry level speaker doesnt do well for me. But take my word as motivation to your curiosity, I encourage you to go out and try out any speaker you can get hands on.

Personally I would suggest IK multimedia speaker, for a small room, had it for a few weeks, if given option between Yammie and IK, i would take IK anytime.