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3.05.05

Introduction

Years from now home theater enthusiasts may

be reading whole articles on the available models

within the Digital Sound Projector category. For

the present though, there exists only the

category-defining Yamaha YSP-1, a brilliant

marriage of compact form with simply amazing

multi-channel synthesis capability.

First Impressions

When we first heard Yamaha's demonstration

of the YSP-1 at the 2005 CES we were fairly

impressed. I remember noting at the time that the

demo space had no roof. So the ambient noise

level that is CES was at its usual 75DB or so. In

fact, that was one of the most striking aspects of

this demo. Instead of trying to construct an

acoustically-correct sound room for their demo

soundstage. Sure the content was the usual

thunder storm or chirping birds in a forest, but the

sounds were definitely not coming from a tinny

little HTIB speaker mounted to the wall. Rather,

the sound was spread out, maybe four feet wide

over my left and right shoulders. And it seemed to

exist, not glued to a speaker source on the wall,

but floating out in the open space behind me. It

was audibly located perhaps a foot forward of the

plywood-wall, open-ceiling juncture.

Two other interesting and new-to-me surround

phenomena seemed to be taking place. First,

because of the open ceiling, CES' ambient crowd-

noise now became the ceiling! The YSP-1's

surround sound did not blend with the crowd-

noise. Instead, the surround image stayed fixed

within the confines of the four-wall plywood room.

Yamaha's crew seemed to have wanted to do the

exact opposite. Construct a topless room with

simple, hard walls made of 1/2" ply. There were

large openings at the two back corners through

which dealers could walk in and hear the demo.

Hmmm... what was up?

And the demo... I had heard demos like this in

years past with any number of electronic-only

methods of phase alteration and what-not that

could throw simple sounds like birds chirping up

and behind you - provided you sat in an exact

sweet spot. So given the high ambient SPL from

the CES crowd-noise and what seemed like a

"parlor trick"-style demo on first listen, I was

kinda-sorta impressed but not overly so.

Then, listening a bit longer while still facing

forward I began to notice the spread of the rear

Yamaha YSP-1 Digital Sound

Projector: A Milestone in

Home Theater History

The promise of a high

performance, simple

hook-up, one-box,

surround-sound

system fulfilled

by Patrick Hart of Audioholics.com

Summary of content (12 pages)

PAGE 1
3.05.05 Yamaha YSP-1 Digital Sound Projector: A Milestone in Home Theater History The promise of a high performance, simple hook-up, one-box, surround-sound system fulfilled by Patrick Hart of Audioholics.com Introduction Years from now home theater enthusiasts may be reading whole articles on the available models within the Digital Sound Projector category.
PAGE 2
YSP-1 Digital Sound Projector review Secondly, the quality of the bird tweets and thunderstorm seemed to sound much more like the real thing. Since the whole Audioholics crew was hearing this demo at the same time, I tempered my enthusiasm for the moment while we politely requested a sample for review.
PAGE 3
Item Name review Projecting surround channels acoustically The design premise of Yamaha's Digital Sound Projector is contained in an in-house, training-oriented "white paper" of sorts entitled "The Goals of a High-Quality Sound Field Creation (System)." This title hints at the inherent 180º difference between the YSP-1 Digital Soundfield Projector we're reviewing here vs.1986's Yamaha DSP-1 Digital Soundfield Processor which, to this author's way of thinking, was a digital sound field recreation device.
PAGE 4
review design philosophy of elegant, simple-of-line, design execution. This philosophy has held especially true whenever rare milestone products such as the YSP-1 are first introduced. In the US, a little known aspect of Yamaha's manufacturing prowess is their line of high style, exquisitely made, wood furniture (since 1903) available only in the Japanese market.
PAGE 5
Item Name review that the simple two-color button theme plus clever spacing ergonomics play such a subtle, yet vital roll. To the left in soft-white are the + and - TV Volume rocker-style buttons for the TV speakers. On the remote's right side the two + and - charcoal gray buttons simply called Volume. A soft-white TV Mute is in the center between these two rocker-style volume controls and matching charcoal gray Mute to quiet the YSP-1 is above that.
PAGE 6
review Sound comes out of the magic box. Surround sound floating in space. Center vocal sound that is up front, natural and clear. The initial audio impact of the YSP-1 will likely be far different than you've ever experienced. Enjoy the sound while you read a bit about Manual Setup... Phil Shea, has been Yamaha's point man for training on new products for longer than he'll care to admit.
PAGE 7
Item Name review The subwoofer level was one that I had to go back and tweak a couple of times. This is because you basically don't have any other signal with which to compare and balance your sub(s). And because the sub's sound, properly done, is omni-directional you'll need to actually hear how your 3 Beam Mode's left, center and right channels articulate and form "sound in space". Only the center channel is actually localizable to the YSP-1.
PAGE 8
review listening positions. This recommendation worked well so I left the Center setting there. Focal Length Right and Focal Length Left seemed to be a different story. Focal length appears to attempt to focus the beam's width more widely (and less powerfully) with short distances and more narrowly (more acoustically powerful) when distances are increased.
PAGE 9
Item Name review YSP-1 Digital Sound Projector Measurements It was fairly easy to measure the YSP-1 outside in free air. For the 4.5" mid-woofer I did a close mic'ed measurement while the YSP-1 was pointing straight up. This gives a reflectionfree curve with no curve-smoothing required. With the software set at 80Hz for the crossover the woofer curved out as seen below. Note how sharp the digital filter cuts off the mid-woofer at 1000Hz! Please don't get too excited by the 114.5dB (average) SPL reading.
PAGE 10
review than adequate treble extension within the context of TV or movie viewing. Also, the bump at 6100Hz most probably corroborates well with frequencies beginning lower, at around 3KHz in rendering the "floating-in-space" sound portrait the YSP-1 is capable of rendering. The caveat to the 6100Hz peak is that with movie music not specifically re-EQ'ed for DVD, instruments with lots of high frequency harmonic energy, like a tambourine, become immediately fatiguing.
PAGE 11
Item Name review Turn to Disc Two from the Standing in the of Motown disc and listen to three jam sessions by some of the world's best musicians. These cuts sound like what you would experience if you carried the microphone around the room while next to the camera man. The ambience of this famous recording studio is stitched into the space of your listening room by the YSP-1. You hear the juxtaposition of the different musicians, the reverberations from those hallowed Motown walls.
PAGE 12
review The naturalness of the YSP-1's center channel sound is carried through to all other channels in equal measure. That it may falter to an extent when trying to portray left-right information, widely splayed out within an overly large, corner placement environment serves only to outline one of the sole limitations of this marvelous machine.