Genelec 8341A SAM™ Studio Monitor Review

[Hephaestus]

I transferred my 8341 pair into our TV corner. They sit now on top of a sideboard and TV is in the middle. Right speaker is in the corner.

GLM4 results here. Subjectively so good that I am not going to manually fiddle with filters. Speakers are connected into TV headphone socket with 3.5mm to XLR cable. ISS takes care of auto on/standby. TV remote controls volume - not SOTA solution (adds DA-AD conversion at unknown quality). No lipsync issues.

Acoustically very challenging position but I hope to showcase that active speakers with built in DSP can give you pleasing results with simple setup in such places.

 

[jonfitch]

Fantastic impressions. It's true, the Genelecs are not going to be the most musical speakers for many listeners. They tell the truth and it's not always pretty. The level balances that are required to sound "right" for certain genres on most other speakers may sound harsh or forward on the Genelecs.

I agree with @Senior NEET Engineer about the bass. Many times the impression of slow or overboosted bass is caused by simply having more of it in the room to have to control. You can adjust for boundary reflections and phase cancellations by changing the speaker's distance from the wall, and then using the switches if you need further adjustments.

Yeah that's a good description. It's kind of like high end Hifiman headphones are well known in headphone circles for being "musical" because its so-rolled off and soft sounding. People can listen to those headphones all day, at the cost of some resolution. Whereas a more accurate headphone can sound fatiguing over time.

I think the other thing is, the fact that the off-axis curves fall off more rapidly with the Revels and the KEFs help them hide the volatility issues in the off-axis frequency response more. Whereas the Genelecs have a flatter off-axis curve, so ripples in the response are more audible. For example the 8331 seems to have a peak in the response off-axis around 3.5k, and the 8341s have a similar issue around 2.5k. This makes vocals a bit more fatiguing compared to the Revel and Kef I compared to. EQing this down helps a lot, but it's hard to eliminate entirely. This is the other reason I'm favoring Dirac over GLM, I can casually edit the target curve and test the results very quickly.

 

[Frank Dernie]

being "musical" because its so-rolled off and soft sounding.

Like most high end pickup cartyridges
The reason people think vinyl is "musical" is usually a rolled off top end. A lot of people don't seem to like natural high frequencies

 

[thewas]

I transferred my 8341 pair into our TV corner. They sit now on top of a sideboard and TV is in the middle. Right speaker is in the corner.

GLM4 results here. Subjectively so good that I am not going to manually fiddle with filters. Speakers are connected into TV headphone socket with 3.5mm to XLR cable. ISS takes care of auto on/standby. TV remote controls volume - not SOTA solution (adds DA-AD conversion at unknown quality). No lipsync issues.

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Acoustically very challenging position but I hope to showcase that active speakers with built in DSP can give you pleasing results with simple setup in such places.

Very interesting, thank you. Where these results achieved with the default settings of GLM? Interestinly they seem to be shelving the mids and highs by a couple of dB making it closer to a continuously falling per 0.8 dB/octave target

while I remember the older versions of GLM being more flat and usually just correcting room peaks without shelving the mid and highs response.

 

[Hephaestus]

Very interesting, thank you. Where these results achieved with the default settings of GLM? Interestinly they seem to be shelving the mids and highs by a couple of dB making it closer to a continuously falling per 0.8 dB/octave target

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View attachment 114129

while I remember the older versions of GLM being more flat and usually just correcting room peaks without shelving the mid and highs response.

I forgot to mention that I use sound character profiler. Settings are: Extension -4 and Strength -8

 

[jonfitch]

I forgot to mention that I use sound character profiler. Settings are: Extension -4 and Strength -8

Yeah I definitely am noticing a preference to try to roll off the highs as well when I run Dirac. Every tweak I find myself slowly trying to turn these into the Kef Reference 1s lol. Amir's interview on Stop the Fomo uploaded today went over this issue. He mentioned that for producers, you want in-room response that's flatter when you are mixing so you hear all the details. But for actual hifi listening, you want to follow something more rolled off in-room response.

 

[jonfitch]

Yeah at the time I figured the vertical dispersion was responsible for what I was hearing but after not feeling the same way about the R3 I've started to wonder if certain frequency ranges are responsible for this. The LS50 has always sounded like a very open speaker to me and the R3 not so much, after seeing measurements from the Klippel that the R3 is actually recessed in the 1-3k range and applying a few filters to boost that range, the open sound was back.

Others have said that the response you describe is what makes a speaker sound "forward" and I agree with that, I've said for awhile that there is probably an ideal dispersion and it seems to be a gently increasing directivity. The ultra wide dispersion speakers that I've heard haven't sounded natural in the highs, they are too bright. As I mentioned the KH 120 that I've been listening to these past few days is really changing my views on the whole narrow vs wide directivity debate, according to many people the Neumann should sound tiny and have no soundstage but even with just 1 speaker in mono they sound really good in my living room. We also have to remember that according to Dr. Toole's study on mono vs stereo speakers, when you have 2 or more speakers playing together, the differences due to spaciousness basically go away and the most neutral speaker will be the one that is preferred. For that reason I think we put too much emphasis lately on "dispersion" when it doesn't seem to make a huge difference when listening to speakers in stereo. How it does make a difference is in how much high frequency energy is put into the room which you were talking about and I do think a wide dispersion speaker, especially a coaxial, could sound more forward because of that. This is my running theory at least.

Kii Three Dispersion

Kef Reference Dispersion

Yeah I remember from John Darko's video on the Kef Reference 1 vs Kii Three. He said the Kii's sounded forward and the soundstage was small, whereas the sound stage sounded vast on the Kef Reference 1. Looking at the dispersion graphs there's some similar trends going on. I'm starting to think flat line = forward sounding and downward line = more expansive probably because of the way we expect the directivity of high frequencies to be narrow.

 

[richard12511]

Yeah I definitely am noticing a preference to try to roll off the highs as well when I run Dirac. Every tweak I find myself slowly trying to turn these into the Kef Reference 1s lol. Amir's interview on Stop the Fomo uploaded today went over this issue. He mentioned that for producers, you want in-room response that's flatter when you are mixing so you hear all the details. But for actual hifi listening, you want to follow something more rolled off in-room response.

When you talk about the drooping treble of the hifi brands, are you talking about the top octave? IME, the top octave is generally not where "brightness" comes from.

If not, your Kef vs Genelec comparison does make sense, but the Revel vs Genelec comparison surprises me a bit. The off axis curves actually fall off more rapidly with the 8341s than they do with the Revels. Tonally, I would expect the Genelec and Revel to sound more similar, with the Revel having the most off axis treble energy, Genelec second, and KEF being the most narrow.

Comparing the 8341 side by side with the M105, the M105 has more off axis treble energy, which should make it sound slightly brighter(since both are neutral on axis). Listening to them both side by side (8351b) here, that is indeed the case to my ears, though it's a pretty small difference. The Genelecs only start having more off axis treble above 8kHz, which is (ime) much less significant in terms of perceived "brightness".

I'm also not sure I agree with you that pro speakers in general have wider treble dispersion than hifi speakers. Revel, Elac, and Focal, for example, all seem to target a slightly wider dispersion width than Genelec, especially when you consider Genelec's main monitors. Genelec seems a bit wider than Neumann(from what we've seen), who seem more comparable to KEF. If you look at companies that do both, like Harman, their hifi brands (Revel, Infinity) tend to target a slightly wider dispersion than their pro brand(JBL), though the difference isn't huge.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, though, and we're describing the same thing in two different ways.

 

[richard12511]

Looking at the dispersion graphs there's some similar trends going on. I'm starting to think flat line = forward sounding and downward line = more expansive probably because of the way we expect the directivity of high frequencies to be narrow.

It's actually the opposite of that . The more sloped down those off axis curves are, the more narrow the dispersion is getting at higher frequencies. Straighter more bunched up lines means wider dispersion, which means a wider sound stage, all else being equal. I wouldn't put too much stock in John's sighted comparison. KEF seems to be targeting a more narrow dispersion than most of it's other competitors. My guess is that the more narrow dispersion will give them tighter and more clear imaging, especially combined with their coaxial designs and excellent neutrality.

*Edit: If by "forward" you mean brighter, then I agree, but then that kinda conflicts with your Revel/Genelec comparison.

 

[jonfitch]

It's actually the opposite of that . The more sloped down those off axis curves are, the more narrow the dispersion is getting at higher frequencies. Straighter more bunched up lines means wider dispersion, which means a wider sound stage, all else being equal. I wouldn't put too much stock in John's sighted comparison. KEF seems to be targeting a more narrow dispersion than most of it's other competitors. My guess is that the more narrow dispersion will give them tighter and more clear imaging, especially combined with their coaxial designs and excellent neutrality.

*Edit: If by "forward" you mean brighter, then I agree, but then that kinda conflicts with your Revel/Genelec comparison.

No I'm just saying it looks Darko, Aaron, and it looks like me have similar impressions with regards to soundstage size versus the measurements, it appears the speaker with declining off-axis curves all sounded "larger" during listening tests. I'm just trying to think this through as far as explaining what I'm hearing, it could be I'm describing it wrong. I also had a couple of friends also demo the Revel/KEF vs Genelec 8341 and 8331. They all agreed the Genelecs sounded like they had "no soundstage" in comparison to the KEFs or Revels--their words. I'm postulating it may be part of the same effect that Darko is describing of the Kii's soundstage like they are in the front row, whereas the KEFs sound like they are way back.

So I've found a small sample of people that seem to have similar opinions. From Harman's research people have different hearing and they are targeting a composite, maybe we are all outside of the norm--who knows. I merely theorized that expectation of higher frequencies being narrow in directivity might have been the cause of some speakers with more rapid (but still very orderly and linear) off-axis curves sounding much larger.

I'm guessing what we are hearing would normally be described by audio professionals as "soundstage depth." The more gradual roll-off (vs flatter) off-axis curve I am theorizing might be creating some sort of effect of the sound of appearing to be further away. I think a flatter off-axis curve makes higher frequency sounds that we expect to be narrow in directivity suddenly sound really close and collapse the soundstage depth.

As for the Revels, they are more rolled off in the off-axis curve as well which is why they may be generating more of this "soundstage depth."

I'm guessing the disagreement here is mostly about words and how they are being used. It seems quite a few listeners are listening to speakers with declination in the off-axis curves, compared to something with a flatter curve, and all describing it as sounding "bigger." Perhaps "soundstage" is the wrong word. God knows people argue about the meaning of the audio words all the time on online forums. It seems like making higher frequency sounds gradually lower in amplitude in off-axis curves is giving some listeners the feeling of "more size/scale" in the sound and some people like the effect. I think it's mostly an off-axis phenomena because my attempts at EQing the response hasn't seemed to change the sound presentation much, even when I try to match REW responses.

 

[Frank Dernie]

The more gradual roll-off (vs flatter) off-axis curve I am theorizing might be creating some sort of effect the the sound of appearing to be further away.

This sounds logical to me.
Given that higher frequency sounds do die out faster with distance than lower frequencies a steeper slope to the in room FR which goes with narrower dispersion will make the sound seem further away.
An in room FR which slopes down less will make the sound closer.

 

[Senior NEET Engineer]

@jonfitch when you experience the more expansive soundstage on the KEF, does it sort of expand past your walls compared to the Genelec? Does the Genelec remind you more that you're listening to music inside your room vs. the music performance space (real or simulated)?

 

[Hephaestus]

Yeah I definitely am noticing a preference to try to roll off the highs as well when I run Dirac. Every tweak I find myself slowly trying to turn these into the Kef Reference 1s lol. Amir's interview on Stop the Fomo uploaded today went over this issue. He mentioned that for producers, you want in-room response that's flatter when you are mixing so you hear all the details. But for actual hifi listening, you want to follow something more rolled off in-room response.

I have noticed that my preferred tilt depends on liveliness of the room. Our last apartment had noticeably shorter reverb time and less tilt was needed.
Kef reference 1 are nice speakers - one of my friends has those with Lyngdorf amp.

 

[TimVG]

This sounds logical to me.
Given that higher frequency sounds do die out faster with distance than lower frequencies a steeper slope to the in room FR which goes with narrower dispersion will make the sound seem further away.
An in room FR which slopes down less will make the sound closer.

I'm not sure. Perhaps in an outdoor environment, but in a room our ears/brain would automatically recognize reflected sounds and be able to (approximately) locate the source.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I'm not sure. Perhaps in an outdoor environment, but in a room our ears/brain would automatically recognize reflected sounds and be able to (approximately) locate the source.

I'm not sure about what the effect may be on imaging, that will be room position dependant too, but I am fairly sure the "close" or "distant" impression will be dependant on the FR slope.

 

[TimVG]

I'm not sure about what the effect may be on imaging, that will be room position dependant too, but I am fairly sure the "close" or "distant" impression will be dependant on the FR slope.

Perhaps I'm interpreting it the wrong way, so let me clarify:

The statement is that since sources, the further they are away, will have their frequency response altered (loss of hf energy), and that modifying the response in a set of speakers, will emulate this effect even when the source is somewhat closer.

My thoughts are:

While this is accurate in a real world environment, in an indoor environment the boundary reflections will give away the physical location, causing us to simply perceive a somewhat duller sound, and not something more distant. For it to be perceived as 'coming from far away' it would have to lack said reflections. Someone could talk to me in my living room while their back is turned (loss of high frequencies), but it wouldn't matter in terms of perception of distance.

 

[jonfitch]

@jonfitch when you experience the more expansive soundstage on the KEF, does it sort of expand past your walls compared to the Genelec? Does the Genelec remind you more that you're listening to music inside your room vs. the music performance space (real or simulated)?

It's simulated space obviously because the actual output drops much faster off-axis than the Genelecs. This is how I would diagram what it sounds like to me in a quick doodle:

 

[Longshan]

“There are dual, rather square woofers behind each vent.”

So each monitor has four woofers?

No. In the centre there’s one woofer, and behind the wave guide there are two larger oval ones, for a total of three per speaker.

 

[Pearljam5000]

No. In the centre there’s one woofer, and behind the wave guide there are two larger oval ones, for a total of three per speaker.

Nope, there are actually 2 per speaker.

 

[Frank Dernie]

No. In the centre there’s one woofer, and behind the wave guide there are two larger oval ones, for a total of three per speaker.

The driver in the middle is a mid range unit, not a "woofer"