I know how fashionable it is to assume there are defects in the listener rather than to re-examine the validity and interpretation of the measurements. My favorite is how people here are questioning how a classical musician who has been around violins his whole life doesn't know how a violin should sound because the Genelecs are the truth! The level of cognitive dissonance required to dogmatically adhere to the notion that loudspeaker measurements are 100% predictive of perceived sound quality is fascinating.
I cannot speak to what others here are saying, but to be clear I am NOT saying the listener is defective here. And I’ve seen several others also express this perspective.
Rather, we are saying that there are many reasons why old “BBC” style coloration may sound preferable to some people on certain collections of tracks. Part of it may be due to recordings having been mastered to sound good on those colored speakers. While many of us here know that would be indicative of technically bad mastering work, it also doesn’t change the fact that it exists and some people will (rightfully) be unwilling to change their music to match the speaker.
However also as others have commented, it should be possible to use GLM to tune the sound of the Genelec’s however you like, including to mimic “BBC” style coloration. So if frequency response is all it is, GLM should be able to correct it.
If not, then it must be something else. As someone who’s had Revel Salon2’s and Genelec 8351B’s in the same room, then later a surround multichannel setup of Genelecs, I have a very strong suspicion I know exactly what it is. Or at least, in the absence of knowing exactly what it is, I can explain a series of experiments that will give you a strong hint.
When playing orchestral music in some rooms via just a pair of Genelec’s, there are definitely moments where the spatial and treble quality doesn’t have the same feeling of realism (despite it being quite crisp and clear) as the real thing. In contrast, the Salon2’s never had this problem (rather, they trade off ability to project narrower beam/focused image, but I digress). Lastly, when I finally got my multichannel setup of Genelecs (8361 fronts and 8351 rears), you can with a push of a button switch between fronts only and stereo upmixing to the rears as well.
And in doing so, it becomes obvious that what I used to think was “artificial treble” or “lack of spatial realism” or whatever else the “untrained” ear (untrained relative to audio engineering, not music) uses to describe this difference is almost entirely due to amount of secondary reflections (or simulated reflections via rear speakers and stereo upmixing to multichannel) mixed in to create a more diffuse and spatially believable presentation (ie it feels like the music is truly in the room with you).
Now on the other hand, some people here commenting things that may seem condescending are actually speaking many things that were true of my former self with less speaker experience. I don’t think it’s condescending, as much as our ego makes it very difficult to swallow the fact that our audio perceptions of speakers are very messy when unexperienced in the different ways seemingly unrelated things can have an impact on some other aspect of audio realism (for example, it’s probably not intuitive how quality bass and midbass is required for good enveloping soundstage).
This doesn’t mean that unexperienced ears (in terms of speakers, not real music — two very different types of training) are wrong when they don’t like what they hear from speakers. It just might mean that the diagnosis of
why it sounds the way it does, is often way off target. And of all the people to struggle with this difficult reality, I would imagine professional musicians will probably find it the most challenging to the ego to accept this reality (which applies to all of us) of trying to diagnose speaker realisms with untrained perceptions and opinions (again, untrained in the science of speakers — not music).
In case anyone interprets this as me dismissing the subjective impressions here by a few members, I am not! I just believe I know what the cause is, and it’s actually quite mundane and fixable. Unfortunately it’s “fixable” only in expensive ways (buying rear surrounds, or wider beam speakers like Revel for stereo-only fronts).