because of the fact that crutchfield magazine was selling these along with their typically excellent lineup of excellent quality speakers, and the fact that I had read good reviews from consumer reports on these speakers, I bought them. I replaced a 15 yr old pair of bookshelfs made by a small company in my home town. The yamahas SUCK. What a disappointment. My old beaters still sound better. I guess it should be obvious: you get what you pay for. Don't believe the hype, even if it's coming from what you consider to be a reliable source. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

I must agree with J.k. from N.Y.,consumer reports picked a dud this time. Ipurchased my 636's for use on my rear pro logic channel and the sound is very
harsh even with pro logics narrow freq. response. I replaced them with AC-600's
by Pinnacle and the difference is like night and day. If any one out there is
thinking about buying a pair of 636's, do yourself and your ears a favor and
try something else.

Bought a pair of these Yamaha speakers and for the price the cant be beat.For $100.00 a pair you get 150 watts of power handling with crisp highs
and decent mid and bass. Had these hooked up to a JBL PSW1000
amplified subwofer and it wasent bad. The placement of the instruments
was nice and centered although there is some coloration but hey in
this price range nothing beat's em.. Nice starter speakears.

Sure there are better speakers out there, but for $100 these speakers get the job done. Add a sub with these and you've got a decent system.

I might not be the best judge of speakers, but I got these speakers from a friend for $50, and they sounded pretty good except for the lows. They did an excellent job on the highs. I'm starting to build a Definitive Tech system piece by piece, and I got a DT Sub 100. Put the crossover at about 70 and I had a wonderful audio system for gaming, movies, and especially hard hitting music. I tried out some DCM K12's with it, and I wouldn't trade the Yamaha 636s for them. They might not be the best speakers, but everywhere I see they sell for $99.99, anyone who's paying more, check out the J&R catalog (or www.jandr.com), where they sell them for $99.99. Anyone who needs a good pair of speakers, and is on a tight budget, for the price you CAN'T BEAT IT!

Who in their right mind would purchase a pair of these speakers. If MIKE FROM CANADA REALLY PAID $250.00 EVEN IN CANADIAN FOR THESE SOMEONE COULD SEE YOU COMING A MILE AWAY.Anyone who would even think for a minute that the nsa636 could be used for anything but a boat anchor needs to put the crack pipe down and come back to this planet for a while. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR AND THATS THAT. I will give them a 5 star rating for being one of the worst things to come out of YAMAHA ever

I have had the Yahmaha speakers for four years and have lasted with excellence even though they have BEEN THROUGH HELL and back. When I frist recieved these little black boxes they we hooked up to a FIVE WATT "Soundesign" rack-o-crap, yet they WERE effcient enough to play quite loudly. Now they are powered with a rather modest 40 watts through my intergrated amp, compined with a separate amplifier driving a subwoofer.... final setup with an eq ( to ajust for room acostics) makes it sound very clear and pleasing. They are vocal speakers not bass boxes.

Speakers, speakers, and speakers, I believe is the most important part of your system. But this does not mean you should spend the most money
on it, just more time selecting it. We like to believe that if we spend
more money, we will automatically get better sound. And in most cases
its true because you should get what you pay for. I don't like to
believe that we get what we pay for especially when we look for bargins.
I think we forget sometimes that we must try to achieve optimal
proformance through proper wattage mating. A 100 watt receiver is not
going to sound good on a $5,000 speakers needing a crazed amount of power. I believe there is a science to this madness. A true audiophile can achieve audiophile sound at a much lower priced system than a person who just rely on buying the most expensive system. Our standards are not as high as we like to
believe it is yet we know what sounds good and what sounds disappointing. All we ask is that the sound does not get annoying and that it makes the sound as much real as possible giving us variety in listening experiences. Even the most expensive and best sounds can get routine if all your recorded materials sound the same or is recorded in the same ways (or in a poor way). Sometimes an excellent speaker and system is a disadvantage because it brings out the flaw in the recording process (i.e static sounds or distortion produced by over mixing). If you look at the people giving their ratings on speakers esp. the Yamaha
A636 which cost $80 to a $100, you will see some have really good things
to say and others really hate it. I believe its because the people who
like it have lucked out and their receiver "gets along with the speaker"
better than those receivers used by the ones that disliked the speaker.
I have to admit that when I bought the Yamaha A635A at BJ's wholesale I
listened to it on a maybe 50 watt receiver and thought it was fantastic,
but when I took it home and put it with my 100 watts Technic receiver
(nonsurround receiver), I lost alot of that sound I thought I
liked...("music presence"). But its still a vary good speaker and not
just because its cheap. I put together a home theater system for my
brother..( Teac proligic 100 watts receiver $200, Audio Source equalizer
$100, Teac CD player $120, pair of Yamaha A635A $99) later we put a pair
of $35 Rabbit outdoor/indoor speakers to it. I swear to you, I don't
know what I did but the thing sounds 3 times better than my system and
as good as any High end system I listened to this date. The bass was
sharp yet full of presence, and the sound was crystal clear with great
presence and accuracy. I envy him so much. He later got a $220 Panasonic
HI FI VCR which made his home into a true movie theater. I challenge any High End Hifi stereo companies to justify their systems high costs, because the system I got for my brother totaling only $554.00 brand new (which include speakers, CD player, equalizer, receiver, and surround speakers) sounds better than any high end mini system or any high costing rack system or most of the high end systems I heard to date so far. I have to give these Yamaha speakers atleast 4 because these speakers sound good on my system and excellent on my brother's.

As a college man ho is a partial music major (classical violin no less), I feel that I have a pretty good idea of what "clean" music should sound like. I got these speakers for $99 for the pair, and FOR THE PRICE, I can't say anything against them. True, they aren't for deep bass or uncolored mid-range, but they have an overall decent sound that makes them more than acceptable for the price range (Consumer Review gave it a Best Price Buy for a reason). And they CAN be LOUD, even in the bass region-I've tried it with a $150-200 JVC 50 W/ch. receiver, and they can certainly handle it. Now for the bass: I've added a $100 Optimus (yes, Radio Shack!) passive Sub to this, and for a total of $200, you can't beat it! The Yahama's do their job with decently-clean sound, and the Optimus gives awesome bass. If you are on a strict budget (like me), they'll do...

I by no means think that these speakers are wonderfull, and would not recommend them to a serious audio enthusiast, but for only $100 a pair, i think they are one of the best sounding set of speakers out there!! For someone on a tight budget, this is a good pair to consider!