Genelec 8361A Review (Powered Monitor)

[Pearljam5000]

Kali Audio IN-8v2 (Second Wave) 3-Way Studio Monitor Review

Note: Rating meant for far-field listening. Preference Rating SCORE: 5.3 SCORE w/ sub: 7.1 Frequency response: +/- 6.1dB 45Hz-20kHz

www.audiosciencereview.com

If they were that close Genelec would have gone out of business

 

[Tom C]

Sheldonian Theatre - B+H Sound

Oxford University gave this brief because a Grade I listed building needed refurbishing with a sound system.

www.bhsound.co.uk

Royal Opera House

A K-array loudspeaker system composed of a long line array of eight Python-KP102 loudspeakers mounted on each side of th...

www.k-array.com

In the case of the Sheldonian, it is specifically stated that the sound reinforcement is for lectures, implying the system isn’t used for music.
The system at the Royal Opera House is for “commercial events” and the performance of contemporary operas which have electronic instruments, implying it’s not used for (sung) voice or more traditional works.

 

[sarumbear]

In the case of the Sheldonian, it is specifically stated that the sound reinforcement is for lectures, implying the system isn’t used for music.
The system at the Royal Opera House is for “commercial events” and the performance of contemporary operas which have electronic instruments, implying it’s not used for (sung) voice or more traditional works.

I know for a fact that ROH use the system for almost all operas, as nowadays the use electronic keyboards are the norm for "in the pit" orchestras.

I don't know about Sheldonian but I know how venue operators work; if sound system is there they will use it.

 

[sibi1865]

With regards to Amir’s comment about orchestral music, I listen mainly to orchestral music and have been doing so via Neumann’s KH 420 for a few months now. I’ve been greatly impressed at how they portray a sense of spaciousness and how you can pinpoint instruments. It would be interesting to see a review of them.

 

[tuga]

Sheldonian Theatre - B+H Sound

Oxford University gave this brief because a Grade I listed building needed refurbishing with a sound system.

www.bhsound.co.uk

Royal Opera House

A K-array loudspeaker system composed of a long line array of eight Python-KP102 loudspeakers mounted on each side of th...

www.k-array.com

I doubt that they were used in the Sheldonian whenever I attended. The theatre is used for academic events, as well as other cultural events, perhaps that's what the sound reinforcement system is for. I was there for a graduation ceremony but I can't I don't remember seeing any mics (not that I would have been looking).
The curch I go to on Mondays to listen to the lunchtime recital also has a sound reinforcement system but it is only used during service and not for music.

How does one find out if a particular opera performance at the ROH was amplified?

 

[Robbo99999]

View attachment 164980
They come in huge boxes so I'm not sure how practical that is to load them on the plane

The only thing more rock solid than the speakers are these boxes....

Yeah, that's some seriously impressive commitment! Solid all the way through the process. Definitely taking pride in their work.

 

[Tom C]

I take it from their description that it’s only used for electronic instruments (because it’s required, right?). It’s possible that they are lying, but I would think that unlikely. And for what reason? I would take them at their word until proven otherwise.

 

[Tangband]

I take this from another forum, it probably applies mostly to subwoofers, I can guess.In which case MDF is taken up.

A completely non-braced box in 16 mm MDF can be a problem if it is reasonably large and you are unlucky with mod shapes. The baffle is very important, but you have to bring the whole box to get the whole structural sound radiation. If you as an amateur without advanced calculation possibilities want to be sure that there will be no problems, you should stiffen the box properly and / or use the so-called constrained layer attenuation (MDF attenuation adhesive MDF). In practice, stiffeners are usually sufficient between the baffle and the back piece and between the side walls (pieces of wood that run vertically in the middle of the surfaces and are connected across the box) because this moves the resonant frequencies so high in frequency that they decay fast enough for the structural noise inaudible.
I-or
Technical consultant in acoustics and audio technology

By the way, he knows the people at Genelec (what he wrote on that forum), but that's a different story.
(probably nothing he for obvious reasons wants to tell in detail what it is about)

A material thats less stiff like MDF is gonna collect energy from the driveunit, and release it somewhat after the signal. This might look good in ordinary sine-sweeps , but the effect of it is a slightly detached and time-smeared perceived pitch of the tones that the instruments are playing.
The constructor of Magico loudspeaker made of stiff, hard material have much to say about this :

Alon Wolf: To Move Out of the Way

Alon Wolf can be mesmerizing. When the founder of Magico gets going on one of his favorite subjects, loudspeaker design, the strength of his convictions, depth of technical knowledge, and sureness of response are enough to hush many a skeptic into silence.

www.stereophile.com

”"I built my first aluminum speaker 10 years ago. Aluminum is a far more appropriate material for a box than MDF, which is the worst thing you can use. A box should be both well damped and stiff; MDF is very damped, but it is not very stiff. The box should also have mass. But since MDF is structured of resin and glue, it's not really hard. When you attach a driver to an MDF box, because it's a damped material, the MDF swallows up a lot of the energy the driver is putting out. It stores the energy, which builds up until you hear the box flexing. When you hear a driver in a well-damped aluminum enclosure, you hear things you never heard before, because all the energy is free to come out into the room."

 

[DanielT]

A material thats less stiff like MDF is gonna collect energy from the driveunit, and release it somewhat after the signal. This might look good in ordinary sine-sweeps , but the effect of it is a slightly detached and time-smeared perceived pitch of the tones that the instruments are playing.
The constructor of Magico loudspeaker made of stiff, hard material have much to say about this :

Alon Wolf: To Move Out of the Way

Alon Wolf can be mesmerizing. When the founder of Magico gets going on one of his favorite subjects, loudspeaker design, the strength of his convictions, depth of technical knowledge, and sureness of response are enough to hush many a skeptic into silence.

www.stereophile.com

”"I built my first aluminum speaker 10 years ago. Aluminum is a far more appropriate material for a box than MDF, which is the worst thing you can use. A box should be both well damped and stiff; MDF is very damped, but it is not very stiff. The box should also have mass. But since MDF is structured of resin and glue, it's not really hard. When you attach a driver to an MDF box, because it's a damped material, the MDF swallows up a lot of the energy the driver is putting out. It stores the energy, which builds up until you hear the box flexing. When you hear a driver in a well-damped aluminum enclosure, you hear things you never heard before, because all the energy is free to come out into the room."

The answer is probably the usual, it depends.Depends on what you have planned to build, construct, what you want to achieve. MDF in some cases good, in others not..There are many factors to consider

Which, incidentally, leads to the conclusion: that DIY speakers in the Genelec class.Just saying, good luck with that.
I know there is good DIY, says nothing else. Only if you want to make really really good "high end" top notch and so on, it requires a lot of knowledge, experience, resources and equipment.

MDF is very damped, but it is not very stiff
Well, but brace? As with the case with subwoofer and MDF. Plywood and sub?

Okay it will be OT so it might be discussed in another thread instead. Here maybe:

Filling/stuffing in Subwoofer?

Hi I am grateful if anyone could sort this out; Is there any point in having filling in a Subwoofer? The question based on the assumption of an otherwise well-constructed Subwoffer, with , for example,cross braces in the box and with steep LP filter, for example 24 dB, crossover frequency 80 Hz...

audiosciencereview.com

 

[Tangband]

The answer is probably the usual, it depends.Depends on what you have planned to build, construct, what you want to achieve. MDF in some cases good, in others not..There are quite a few factors to consider

Which, incidentally, leads to the conclusion: that DIY speakers in the Genelec class.Just saying, good luck with that.
I know there is good DIY, says nothing else. Only if you want to make really really good "high end" top notch and so on, it requires a lot of knowledge, experience, resources and equipment.

MDF is very damped, but it is not very stiff
Well, but brace? As with the case with subwoofer and MDF. Plywood and sub?

Okay it will be OT so it might be discussed in another thread instead. Here maybe:

Filling/stuffing in Subwoofer?

Hi I am grateful if anyone could sort this out; Is there any point in having filling in a Subwoofer? The question based on the assumption of an otherwise well-constructed Subwoffer, with , for example,cross braces in the box and with steep LP filter, for example 24 dB, crossover frequency 80 Hz...

audiosciencereview.com

Youre right about that.
Well, I gave up all future plans of making a top DIY loudspeaker the moment I borrowed a pair of 8330 and did extensive measurements and comparisons with my active dsp HYBRID DIY loudspeakers. The Genelec measured really good, as good as my HYBRIDs, but the sound was a bit better. Im sure a part of this has to do with the cabinet material. And making a cabinet from steel is impossible for a non-professional.

So - Genelec knows a few things of the art and science of making good loudspeakers, thats for sure.

 

[buz]

This " end game " situation reminded of how the very large flat screen TV have almost rendered obsolete any projection setup for home use.

No projector setup makes any sense anymore against the recent 75~85" LCD TVs unless you are really aiming for that 120" or more screen size
because your setup is for a large number of peeps.

FWIW, I decided to go LCD as soon as 60" LCD was decently priced (2012 or some such) but then again I have a small room.

Was kinda decided to get KEF R, now I am doubting again (also, FU KEF for not giving the 20% rebate in Switzerland...)

 

[Spocko]

Can you link us to this quote?

For context I was referencing Dr. Toole's book Sound Reproduction (3rd Edition) section 7.4.2 The Effect of Loudspeaker Directivity (p.174) wherein Dr. Toole embarked on a series of experiments with various speakers and wall reflectivity variables.

Reference #1: Ultimately, the most important element of spatial information is the recording technique of the mixing engineer, then the directivity of the loudspeakers and lastly the reflectivity of the surfaces involved in first reflections "especially in recordings incorporating left or right hard panned sounds". First reflections are less important if the spatial cues were in the recordings themselves because then direct sounds would have such spatial cues embedded - the possible implication (though yet untested, just speculated) is that if the recording room was acoustically dead, then the engineer would mix in the spatial cues so that all speakers/room combinations would benefit; however, if the recording room is reverberant, then the mixing engineer would hear the spatial cues coming from the room and fail to add said cues into the recording itself. This is why a recording room must be designed differently than a listening room as the mixer must know how much spatial cue to embed into the content itself. Anyway the conclusion on p.183 is that "...a loudspeaker with narrower dispersion, but with more uniform output off-axis, was given lower ratings than two loudspeakers with wider dispersion, but uneven output off-axis, suggesting that some amount of laterally reflected energy is desirable, even if it is spectrally distorted. Would speakers with wider, more uniform, dispersion have done even better? This was especially true in monophonic sources..."

Reference #2: Which leads to additional context we need to understand called the Precedence (Haas) Effect discussed in section 7.6.4 p. 201. The Precedence Effect is when a direct sound (from the speaker) followed by the same sound from another direction (horizontally) arriving late enough to be perceived spatially co-existing with the dominant sound but not so late as to be perceived as a separate "echo". For speech this is somewhere between 1 ms and 30 ms. On page 208, Dr. Toole concluded that this Precedence Effect is beneficial and desirable providing "greater pleasure" to listeners described as "image broadening" (what we audiophiles now call wider soundstage) and "extending the stereo soundstage beyond the spread of the loudspeakers". So this Precedence Effect can be either included in the recording and enjoyed from the direct sound or supplemented by first reflections in the room (within 30 ms, much later than that it becomes an undesirable echo) if such information is not contained in the direct sound.

So based on the above findings in Dr. Toole's book, my conclusion is that for stereo listening, first reflections from side walls certainly help when the source is lacking in spatial ambient cues (reference #1) and does not hurt because at worse, it offers the Precedence Effect for widening the soundstage beyond what the content may already be offering (reference #2).

If my own conclusions from the above readings are in error, please correct me! But this has been my interpretation and conclusion that for end user stereo listening, first reflections are more beneficial more often than not. Now I must also mention that Dr. Toole hates being used as a strawman for these arguments (that he is an absolute proponent of first reflections) without the above context because there are certainly situations where first reflections offer nothing; and more importantly, in a recording studio it is clear that Dr. Toole does NOT want first reflections because it would be better for the end listener that the mixer adds ambient cues into the content being mixed but having first reflections in the mixing studio would be detrimental to this objective as then the mixer would incorrectly assume the existence of ambient cues in his mix when in reality those cues are from his room!

 

[Spocko]

I don't think he ever said all first reflections were beneficial but side wall reflections arriving from ~60 degrees were the most preferred in increasing spaciousness whereas reflections arriving straight from the front or behind were the most distracting/superfluous.

True, I shouldn't have generalized and been more specific. I meant first reflections in the horizontal plane (side walls, not the back nor front wall) offer a wider sense of spaciousness when matched to wide dispersion speakers (assuming the walls are close enough to offer the Precedence Effect within 30 ms beyond which it becomes an echo/reverberation in your listening area which is arguably undesirable).

 

[sarumbear]

For context I was referencing Dr. Toole's book Sound Reproduction (3rd Edition) section 7.4.2 The Effect of Loudspeaker Directivity (p.174) wherein Dr. Toole embarked on a series of experiments with various speakers and wall reflectivity variables.

Reference #1: Ultimately, the most important element of spatial information is the recording technique of the mixing engineer, then the directivity of the loudspeakers and lastly the reflectivity of the surfaces involved in first reflections "especially in recordings incorporating left or right hard panned sounds". First reflections are less important if the spatial cues were in the recordings themselves because then direct sounds would have such spatial cues embedded - the possible implication (though yet untested, just speculated) is that if the recording room was acoustically dead, then the engineer would mix in the spatial cues so that all speakers/room combinations would benefit; however, if the recording room is reverberant, then the mixing engineer would hear the spatial cues coming from the room and fail to add said cues into the recording itself. This is why a recording room must be designed differently than a listening room as the mixer must know how much spatial cue to embed into the content itself. Anyway the conclusion on p.183 is that "...a loudspeaker with narrower dispersion, but with more uniform output off-axis, was given lower ratings than two loudspeakers with wider dispersion, but uneven output off-axis, suggesting that some amount of laterally reflected energy is desirable, even if it is spectrally distorted. Would speakers with wider, more uniform, dispersion have done even better? This was especially true in monophonic sources..."

Reference #2: Which leads to additional context we need to understand called the Precedence (Haas) Effect discussed in section 7.6.4 p. 201. The Precedence Effect is when a direct sound (from the speaker) followed by the same sound from another direction (horizontally) arriving late enough to be perceived spatially co-existing with the dominant sound but not so late as to be perceived as a separate "echo". For speech this is somewhere between 1 ms and 30 ms. On page 208, Dr. Toole concluded that this Precedence Effect is beneficial and desirable providing "greater pleasure" to listeners described as "image broadening" (what we audiophiles now call wider soundstage) and "extending the stereo soundstage beyond the spread of the loudspeakers". So this Precedence Effect can be either included in the recording and enjoyed from the direct sound or supplemented by first reflections in the room (within 30 ms, much later than that it becomes an undesirable echo) if such information is not contained in the direct sound.

So based on the above findings in Dr. Toole's book, my conclusion is that for stereo listening, first reflections certainly help when the source is lacking in spatial ambient cues (reference #1) and does not hurt because at worse, it offers the Precedence Effect for widening the soundstage beyond what the content may already be offering (reference #2).

If my own conclusions from the above readings are in error, please correct me! But this has been my interpretation and conclusion that for end user stereo listening, first reflections are more beneficial more often than not. Now I must also mention that Dr. Toole hates being used as a strawman for these arguments (that he is an absolute proponent of first reflections) without the above context because there are certainly situations where first reflections offer nothing; and more importantly, in a recording studio it is clear that Dr. Toole does NOT want first reflections because it would be better for the end listener that the mixer adds ambient cues into the content being mixed but having first reflections in the mixing studio would be detrimental to this objective as then the mixer would incorrectly assume the existence of ambient cues in his mix when in reality those cues are from his room!

Reference #1 is not applicable on almost any non-classical recording since the 80s where everything was close miked to multitrack and any reverb was applied artificially at mixing.

Reference #2 is what I will interpret as the sound of the room. The so called Precedence Effect is, as the name says, is an effect. It’s not natural. I rather not have a room sound.

I disagree with Dr Toole that unless you record the spatial information (in multi-channel, discreet surround) you cannot extract the spatial information. You may create a pleasing effect but that’s what it is, an effect…

 

[abdo123]

I rather not have a room sound.

Are you a headphones person?

 

[audio2920]

Great insight, thank you.

Which speakers do you currently own?

The short answer is, currently JBL 7-series.

But all my work for the foreseeable future is facility based, where I'm mixing on JBL ScreenArray (or equivalent) in larger rooms.

I'd like something just a *little bit* more substantial for the LCR in that small room though. Maybe not right now as I'm hardly using it and I'm kinda over testing different monitors for a bit I think. I've kinda run out of head space for it all. Maybe KH420 or Core 59 or Trio 11 would be enough of a step up? Maybe I should add the 8361s back to the short list? I dunno...

 

[abdo123]

Reference #2: Which leads to additional context we need to understand called the Precedence (Haas) Effect discussed in section 7.6.4 p. 201. The Precedence Effect is when a direct sound (from the speaker) followed by the same sound from another direction (horizontally) arriving late enough to be perceived spatially co-existing with the dominant sound but not so late as to be perceived as a separate "echo". For speech this is somewhere between 1 ms and 30 ms. On page 208, Dr. Toole concluded that this Precedence Effect is beneficial and desirable providing "greater pleasure" to listeners described as "image broadening" (what we audiophiles now call wider soundstage) and "extending the stereo soundstage beyond the spread of the loudspeakers". So this Precedence Effect can be either included in the recording and enjoyed from the direct sound or supplemented by first reflections in the room (within 30 ms, much later than that it becomes an undesirable echo) if such information is not contained in the direct sound.

Man that's such a weird purist opinion that is honestly disjointed from the world of music production.

People travel across the world to perform and record in gigantic places of worship and concert halls with reverberation times reaching 5 or 6 seconds! for him to think that this phenomenal effect is 'undesirable echo' is frankly rude!

Everyone would love to have that sort of effect in their listening spaces, people in small rooms have to either endure distortions caused by reflections or treat their rooms really well and have a 'headphone' like effect where there are no sense of spaciousness at all.

 

[sarumbear]

Are you a headphones person?

No. I treat my rooms.

 

[sarumbear]

Man that's such a weird purist opinion that is honestly disjointed from the world of music production.

People travel across the world to perform and record in gigantic places of worship and concert halls with reverberation times reaching 5 or 6 seconds! for him to think that this phenomenal effect is 'undesirable echo' is frankly rude!

Everyone would love to have that sort of effect in their listening spaces, people in small rooms have to either endure distortions caused by reflections or treat their rooms really well and have a 'headphone' like effect where there are no sense of spaciousness at all.

What is rude is replying before reading the post fully.

I specifically said “non-classical recordings”. All other musicians travel to a studio…

 

[ex audiophile]

Apologies if this has already been covered, but I've been focusing on the best way to stream to these speakers. You don't need a DAC, but you do need a balanced digital output and those are rare in consumer level streamers. I understand that you can convert an RCA output, e.g. the digital output from a Node, but according to Paul at BS Audio that is not wise. It can be done but you lose the advantages of a balanced connection.
So if that is true we need something with a genuine balanced digital output and in my case I need built in streaming platforms, including Spotify. One candidate is the Aries G1, a very expensive bridge, no DAC, and it has native Tidal and Qobuz but not Spotify. And it's pricey at about $2900 retail. Aurender might have something similar but I am not familiar with their lineup.

I appears easier to use a streamer/DAC like the Matrix X-Spectre3. I just bought one of these and have been trying to work it into my 2 channel setup. It would be an easy setup to send the balanced analog outputs to the Genelecs; you'd have the built in streaming platforms and a nice volume control. Not sure if it would be a waste of the wonderful DAC, given all the digital manipulations that would go on in the Genelec, but no harm done sending a pristine signal into the speakers.

So I'd love to hear alternative options for streaming into the Genelecs, there should be a less expensive way than the Aries or Matrix.

update: Cambridge offers the Azur 851N, a network streaming device, with digital outputs for $1500 retail.