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Genelec 8361A Review (Powered Monitor)

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 6 0.9%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 4 0.6%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 29 4.3%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 640 94.3%

  • Total voters
    679

abdo123

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It's completely plausible that a person who's into classical music would not appreciate narrow directivity speakers as much as wide directivity ones.

you piranhas really need to give other people the space to express their opinions without ripping them a new one :p
 

TunaBug

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I'm not trying to pull this classical back-and-forth in one direction or the other. Sincerely asking out of ignorance and hoping to learn something....

One of my takeaways from https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ers-are-the-classical-music-pros-using.12225/ is that B&W seems to have done a great job of seeding mixing/mastering engineers in the classical music industry with B&W speakers (801s in particular). I infer from that that a lot of recorded classical music is manipulated in the recording to sound "right" when played back through something that sounds like a B&W speaker. And the Genelecs don't sound like a B&W. How much of that is behind this discussion?
 

waldo2

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Agree that BIS is generally excellent. Harmonia Mundi often recorded way too close, but the musicians on the label are extraordinary, so hard to ignore.
 

q3cpma

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It's completely plausible that a person who's into classical music would not appreciate narrow directivity speakers as much as wide directivity ones.

you piranhas really need to give other people the space to express their opinions without ripping them a new one :p
Well, but that's a fine opinion. The man relying on the "I'm a Musician™, so I don't have to understand the science" and the resident contrarian population jumping in to peddle their usual "You see? Flat magnitude and smooth directivity are not objectively good!" is something else.

...
After correction, the bass was definitely improved, but the treble was even worse. So, I knocked down the treble levels.
...
By the way, modern GLM doesn't correct above a few hundred Hz...

Anyway, most people here are correct, a stereo recording can't sound like the instruments themselves for many reasons including:
* Instruments having complex frequency variable directivity.
* Studio albums not wanting to actually sound like the real thing but "better" (lower noise floor, ideal mix that isn't necessarily possible in a live hall across all the seats, greatly reduced reverberation to increase clarity, etc...).
* Too many uncontrolled variables between the studio and your situation (equipement, room, positioning).

And you may prefer wider directivity speakers.
 
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waldo2

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Here is gear in BIS studio. Taken from longer attachment.

BIS has 3 studios for editing, mixing and mastering in its headquarters. One is a surround room, equipped with B&W 802 Diamond, MAGIX Sequoia DAW, YAMAHA 02R 96 console, EMM Labs DAC 8 MK IVs, a Lexicon 960 L, and Avid Artist Mix, and mastering of SACD is processed in this studio. The other 2 studios are PCM stereo rooms, equipped with B&W Matrix 801(Studio1) and QUAD ESL-63(Studio2) speakers, MAGIX Sequoia DAW, and Avid Artist Mix.

 

sarumbear

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A musical speaker is, for me, one that sounds like actual acoustic instruments, particularly timbre and tonality. Those instruments played well are beautiful. Violinists Are particularly senitive to intonation I think.
I am sorry to bring you the bad news but what you want is a musical instrument. A loudspeaker is a transducer. If recording is bad you will hear bad sound.

Imagine this: If you place a microphone inside a piano and close the lid, what will be recoded will not sound like a piano when played back. Is that the fault of the speaker?
 

q3cpma

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Here is gear in BIS studio. Taken from longer attachment.

BIS has 3 studios for editing, mixing and mastering in its headquarters. One is a surround room, equipped with B&W 802 Diamond, MAGIX Sequoia DAW, YAMAHA 02R 96 console, EMM Labs DAC 8 MK IVs, a Lexicon 960 L, and Avid Artist Mix, and mastering of SACD is processed in this studio. The other 2 studios are PCM stereo rooms, equipped with B&W Matrix 801(Studio1) and QUAD ESL-63(Studio2) speakers, MAGIX Sequoia DAW, and Avid Artist Mix.

Yes, they list the equipment used in every booklet. They use headphones a lot, too. Even those old B&W have a quite flat response on-axis, I can only hope their midfield use prevent their wonky directivity from having effect.

Interesting thing: I've discussed with the BIS owner and he uses old Genelecs (2 x 1024 + 3 x S30) for his listening.
 
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dshreter

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Why do some people hate Genelecs? Probably because every one is weird looking and none look like something that should sound good.

Why does Genelec seem to have more “fans” than Neumann? Probably for the same reason.
 

dfuller

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Story for minuscule reproduction earlier. This is excellent playing, just difficult to listen to on 8361
Mozart: String Quartets dedicated to Joseph Haydn
Mozart: String Quartets dedicated to Joseph HaydnCuarteto CasalsHMC902186
That's the recording. The violin is quite shrill on my KH310s too.

Why do some people hate Genelecs? Probably because every one is weird looking and none look like something that should sound good.

Why does Genelec seem to have more “fans” than Neumann? Probably for the same reason.
You'll notice a lot of people in that thread are saying they are a pain to get music mixes to translate on. And yeah, for a lot of them IME that's true. Something about them sounds "too good" if that makes sense. Difficult to discern issues. Post houses and the engineers who work in them love them, though, so it definitely isn't a they aren't good kind of thing.

It's completely plausible that a person who's into classical music would not appreciate narrow directivity speakers as much as wide directivity ones.

you piranhas really need to give other people the space to express their opinions without ripping them a new one :p
Totally! Though I don't think that's the issue at hand.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

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Also, I have yet to see a classical music lover step up and disagree with my take on the speakers.
Can you share a few tracks you think best demonstrates your issues?
 

Inner Space

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The man relying on the "I'm a Musician™, so I don't have to understand the science" and the resident contrarian population jumping in to peddle their usual "You see? Flat magnitude and smooth directivity are not objectively good!" is something else.
I'm not sure who exactly you're addressing, but I'll volunteer to answer. I'll start by saying this is the kind of discussion that needs mutual goodwill and tolerance as we seek an answer to a complex question, rather than the kind of antagonism and aggression you include above.

I'm a musician, and I also understand the science pretty well. Probably better than you understand music, anyway. I'll start with an imperfect comparison: low noise and distortion are important in electronics, but improvements that happen below the threshold of audibility don't matter; just as FR in a speaker doesn't matter beyond a certain point.

The former is well understood and widely accepted. The latter hasn't been tested yet. Except it has, billions of times over the last century. Musical joy and ecstasy have been achieved by listeners with grossly inadequate equipment, when compared to Genelec standards. How is that possible?

We know the brain has immense audio processing capabilities. We experience the effects every second of every day. The sophistication is stunning. Is it unreasonable to surmise the brain interprets and smooths FR where it needs to? In a way we can prove it does - think of the serious record reviewers from the past, when that was an honorable profession (still is, mostly) - how could they make musical sense of what they were hearing, if we judge solely on technical grounds? How did they sense touch and nuance, and line and flow, when we know the sound power in their room was hopping randomly up and down?

My experience over 44 years as a pro on both sides of the glass is that all speakers are pretty inadequate. All of them eventually reveal their clumsy, lumpen, mechanical nature. At best I carry around a mental database, a bit of this, a bit of that, a kind of imaginary Franken-speaker that would combine the best parts of the best I've heard. Some of those parts are cabinet silence, headroom, lack of compression, low distortion, bandwidth ... undoubtedly all measurable metrics, yet they're rarely reported and it's rare that they're considered as a related suite.

But if all that's not science-y enough for you, concentrate on explaining to me how one somewhat-wiggly FR is better than another somewhat-wiggly FR. Is it where the wiggles are, or their height, or spacing, or exact shape, or what? If you can't tell me, will you admit there might be more to speakers than spinoramas?
 

Pearljam5000

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It's OK not to like the Genelec sound, they're not for everyone
I also like the Focal sound even though I know and hear they're not the most accurate, there's something pleasing about it
Alot of people find Genelecs to be bright and analytical, I enjoy it, some suffer because of it.
 
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Sancus

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Mozart: String Quartets dedicated to Joseph HaydnCuarteto CasalsHMC902186

I tried this recording and I agree, it sounds bright. Bumping the treble down 2-3dB using tone controls helps it a lot. But it sounds this way on my mediocre desktop Vanatoo Zeros as well, not just on my Genelecs. And honestly, classical recordings with overly bright brass or strings are a dime a dozen unfortunately :/

For the mostpart, my favourite string recordings(not necessarily music) are the 2L albums like In folk style - Trondheimsolistene -- though the stereo downmixes are no multi-channel. But both sound absolutely fantastic on my Genelecs.
 

waldo2

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Can you share a few tracks you think best demonstrates your issues?

Generally, I’m not alone in thinking that most classical recordings are made from too close. Still, that’s what we mostly have. Some of those records are still great, but lean speakers are not compatible. We live in the real world with imperfect records, some more imperfect than others. For example, Isabelle Faust is a violinist I like very much , but many of her recordings are very closely miked. Now, you can say that I don’t like accurate speakers because of the inaccurate recordings. But I don’t think it’s that simple. I recognize this is a compliated issue, but, in any event, we can only listen to available recordings, and why would any consumer want speakers that doesnt make the better of those recordings sound nice?

Since we have mentioned BIS and someone earlier mentioned Martinu, I think the following recent recording is excellent and decently recorded. Zimmerman is obviously a great violinist and this recording sounds like a real violin I think, both on orchestral Martinu and instrumental Bartok: https://bis.se/performers/zimmerman...iolin-concertos-bartok-sonata-for-solo-violin.

I know very little about recording, but I have noticed that Tony Faulkner, a legend of some sort I guess, is the Engineer on many records I like. More natural recordings not usually so close miked. Here is an interesting interviiew with Faulkner about classical recording. He notes that he uses quad esl. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...BAA73E9C3B4B33B86059BAA73E9C3B4B33B&FORM=VIRE.
 

mkt

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