Genelec 8341A SAM™ Studio Monitor Review

[amirm]

It should not. There might be something wrong with the volume settings during the measurement...?

Nothing went wrong during the measurements. It was listening tests with music where the overload indicator came on together with severe distortion.

 

[soundwave76]

I have the 8340 in my fairly large living room - about 60m2 with a height about 3,5m. Of course the definition of ’large’ varies but anyway. I have set the max volume to about -35dB and it is still LOUD. Did you check via GLM what the stored max volume setting was in the 8341 before measurements amirm?

In any case this is an issue that can be fixed easily - just add a SAM sub and the calibration is a breeze. I have the 8331 in another room in a near field setup. They sound excellent, but the lack of bass was an issue and I added the 7350 sub and now it’s perfect.

EDIT: Ok, I read again that you did a factory reset

 

[QMuse]

Ok, but it's not just corner gain that's at play here. To start with, you're getting +6dB gain from the floor there. Then an unknown amount from back and side walls. You may well already be getting more than 10 or 15dB of boost just from the first reflections. Then you have all the secondary reflections. The critical distance in a typical room is typically less than 2m. The SPL that speaker is outputting in your measurement may well translate to less than 90dB @1m anechoically.

I agree that these small boxes would almost certainly perform worse, though.

I'm aware of all this - this is room measurement and that's how things go there. Besies, I didn't post that measurement for a direct comparison with free space measurement but for the folks to try to measure themselves with REW. All rooms will have similar gain so those figures will be comparable. As I said, I doubt small speakers can reach the same SPL with the same THD at the same position and same distance. Have you tried yours?

 

[QMuse]

I don't think you can call a speaker with significantly inferior off-axis performance more accurate just because its on-axis performance has a 0.5dB tighter tolerance. I think that's the point here.

You can maybe call it more accurate but it's certainly not better and @MZKM mark would show that.

 

[stevenswall]

Hi

We may complain and discuss all we want about the price. This remains one stellar case where the price is inline with the performances.. This is what High End Audio should have been about ... Performances commensurate with price.

Makes you wonder how good their larger (and more expensive) models would be.

If it's not in The Ones series, then likely louder, but less accurate, and worse off axis response. Their high SPL and large main monitors are 2-2.5 deviation from flat, while their 8000 series is 1.5db deviation or less, with The Ones having excellent vertical and horizontal dispersion. Also: In some cases bass extension on larger, square box monitors isn't on par with what you might think. There are ATC speakers with 15" woofers that only go down to 50hz or so... But if you want bass and loudness, Genelec does have massive main monitors that go down to 17hz, I just don't think they will do as well as a coaxial for directivity control.

 

[stevenswall]

Is it possible to get better?

Yes, if it went deeper, I think it would score closer to the "with a sub" score... and theoretically, the large the waveguide the more controlled the directivity would be at lower frequencies, so an 8361 should score better.

 

[QMuse]

Haha fair enough I still don't understand though how they can claim to phase-correct a system without introducing pre-echo, though.

Using the same method as with room EQ - only Q<=1 are allowed.

 

[stevenswall]

Yes, listening while standing and walking around is exactly why it's frustrating for me to find almost no active coaxials in the price range I want - more expensive and less compromised than the Kali IN-8, cheaper than the Genelec, less irrelevant lifestyle features to inflate BOM price and increase points of failure than the LS50W (also larger with more SPL ability). I want an R3 active ideally.

I am literally trying to harass KEF by mentioning that they need an active R3 on every other ad I see of theirs on Facebook. Haven't heard them but the Pioneer RM07 might be something to listen to... Also the Elac Navis, but measurements look like it's fairly colored. I did like them when I listened to them, but I was coming from a DIY speaker that I'm sure was even more colored.

 

[tuga]

Are you referring to my measurements? If so, CEA-2034 calls for 79 dB SPL at 2 meters (or 85/1 meter as you state). This translates to 94 dB at 1/3 meter which is what I am using as my rig won't go out that far.

Is there a chance that this could be overloading the mic or someho

I have the 8340 in my fairly large living room - about 60m2 with a height about 3,5m. Of course the definition of ’large’ varies but anyway. I have set the max volume to about -35dB and it is still LOUD. Did you check via GLM what the stored max volume setting was in the 8341 before measurements amirm?

In any case this is an issue that can be fixed easily - just add a SAM sub and the calibration is a breeze. I have the 8331 in another room in a near field setup. They sound excellent, but the lack of bass was an issue and I added the 7350 sub and now it’s perfect.

EDIT: Ok, I read again that you did a factory reset

Physics dictates that small speakers with small drivers cannot reproduce low frequencies at high SPLs without producing distortion.

The 8341A is one such speaker. The fact that you can "work around" the inherent limitations of the small speaker topology with a subwoofer is irrelevant when you are measuring its performance.

 

[QMuse]

Is there a chance that this could be overloading the mic or someho

No chance - mic @amirm is using can probably handle at least 140dB at 1m without any sweat.

 

[Purité Audio]

8260 and 7270x2 subs, upon their release , what ten years ago, plenty loud enough.


Keith

 

[QMuse]

8260 and 7270x2 subs, upon their release , what ten years ago, plenty loud enough.


Keith

That certainly means this lovely young lady can also look at the 8260 from the above today.

 

[tuga]

Yes

It's missing some flowers on top... I'd love a marble finish (not).

 

[napilopez]

6dB for room gain is very conservative though...

EDIT: also interesting that the NRC didn't seem to get the same (I presume) equal loudness DSP that your measurements show for the Reactor when they measured the Gold Phantom. Not to doubt your measurements at all in this respect, just pondering why Devialet decided to put this feature in the Reactor but not the Gold Phantom for whatever reason.

PS have you measured other speakers with good low-bass extension in the same room? Maybe you could estimate the room gain by comparing those measurements to published anechoic measurements of those speakers?

EDIT2: scrap all of that, including EDIT 1

I'd misread the labelling on your measurements @napilopez. Very hard to infer from that whether the dynamic EQ shown there is designed to simply protect the woofers or also to compensate for equal loudness. Does seem to suggest you have about 10-12dB of room gain in the low bass though, wouldn't you agree?

Great call on using a known anechoically measured speaker to calculate room gain. I have the D&D 8Cs in so I can do some measurements later in the week. I took some sweeps when originally setting them up but didn't save them.

I dont think there's really much dynamic EQ happening. There is some weirdness happening at the very highest volume setting (100 percent in devialet's app), but all the other ones track seem to track each other very closely above 60Hz. Compression only really seems to affect the region below 60Hz. I quite appreciate this detail since usually it begins higher up into the mids and even mid-bass. The way compression is built into the Reactor means you still get some bass oomph throughout most of the bass, it's just the sub-bass that might be limited.

Anyway, in looking into this It realized I don't understand room gain as well as I thought I did. You're right, it's probably more in the very lowest part of the bass.

In the meantime, here's the Reactor 900 vs the Kef R3 in room. I've moved some things around in my room since the R3 measurements were made but nothing that should really affect the low bass. Note the R3 had the benefit of having both speakers pretty much perfectly aligned with one another timing wise.

Obviously this isn't the ideal way to compare in-room measurements, but I think it should still give you an idea of how much room gain I'm working with (and that the Reactors do indeed have an unnecessary boost in the bass).

With 1/1 smoothing to maybe show trends a bit better:

Kef's anechoic measurement of the R3 (note different scaling) which shows a very flat speaker with just a slight tilt.


Based on Jeff Bagby's very useful Baffle Diffraction and Boundary Simulator it seems I should be getting a roughly 6dB boos at 60Hz, but a 9dB boost at 20Hz for placement in my room.

 

[Frank Dernie]

@Frank Dernie thanks, that's interesting. The only concrete feature I can discern from their website copy is dynamic EQ.

Do you know much else about what parameters the SAM system is measuring/modifying?

In particular, I find it hard to reconcile the following: "SAM lets your system achieve perfect temporal alignment between the recorded signal and the acoustic pressure generated by your loudspeakers" and yet, "The process is strictly causal and generates no pre-echo."

Given the woofer in most of these speakers is low-pass filtered by passive electronics and in all cases acoustically high-pass filtered by the enclosure it's in, the claim is implausible.

Not out to dis this technology BTW, like I said a few posts back, even if it's only a calibrated dynamic EQ, I think it's a worthwhile feature. Just trying to understand what else it's actually doing (which is apparently not what Devialet claims it is doing).

EDIT: also, "96000 inspection points per seconds"... um, that wouldn't happen to be the sample rate would it, lol?

I don't know exactly what their limits are. They measure the driver movement and compare with the input signal to create an error function to invert and apply. They measure, or estimate using their own method, the safe thermal and mechanical limits of the drivers to prevent damage when the correction is large. The correction is below 200 Hz so the crossover shouldn't matter.
There are speakers they classify as unsuitable. I know for some that is because the bass unit isn't exposed for their laser measurement device, maybe there are other reasons too.
Neither of the speakers I use with my Devialet have a SAM profile
The bit I don't "get" is how it works to reduce the bass -3dB point on a reflex loaded speaker.

 

[QMuse]

Great call on using a known anechoically measured speaker to calculate room gain. I have the D&D 8Cs in so I can do some measurements later in the week. I took some sweeps when originally setting them up but didn't save them.

I dont think there's really much dynamic EQ happening. There is some weirdness happening at the very highest volume setting (100 percent in devialet's app), but all the other ones track seem to track each other very closely above 60Hz. Compression only really seems to affect the region below 60Hz. I quite appreciate this detail since usually it begins higher up into the mids and even mid-bass. The way compression is built into the Reactor means you still get some bass oomph throughout most of the bass, it's just the sub-bass that might be limited.

Anyway, in looking into this It realized I don't understand room gain as well as I thought I did. You're right, it's probably more in the very lowest part of the bass.

In the meantime, here's the Reactor 900 vs the Kef R3 in room. I've moved some things around in my room since the R3 measurements were made but nothing that should really affect the low bass. Note the R3 had the benefit of having both speakers pretty much perfectly aligned with one another timing wise.

Obviously this isn't the ideal way to compare in-room measurements, but I think it should still give you an idea of how much room gain I'm working with (and that the Reactors do indeed have an unnecessary boost in the bass).

View attachment 51601

With 1/1 smoothing to maybe show trends a bit better:
View attachment 51602
Kef's anechoic measurement of the R3 (note different scaling) which shows a very flat speaker with just a slight tilt.
View attachment 51600

I would be very much interested to see some more in-room distortion spectrum graphs. It takes only a few minutes to measure it, crank a speaker to produce 100dB at 4m and measure distortion spectrum with stepped sine. Most of your neighbours will forgive you 15 seconds of SPL harrasment and for those who won't you can always apologise and buy them a beer in the pub.

 

[napilopez]

I would be very much interested to see some more in-room distortion spectrum graphs. It takes only a few minutes to measure it, crank a speaker to produce 100dB at 4m and measure distortion spectrum with stepped sine. Most of your neghbours will forgive you 15 seconds of SPL harrasment and for those who won't you can always apologise and buy a beer.

Well, I usually have to do all my measurements in one go, usually doing two+ speakers on the same day because the setup is the most time-consuming. So aside from any distortion measurements, they're already hearing probably hundreds of sine sweeps just doing the spins .

But yes, the spins are relatively quiet and a handful of high SPL measurements aren't awfu. I hope to do so some distortion measurements down the road, but first I'd like to educate myself a lot more about distortion before I'm comfortable posting data without a meaningful way to interpret it or detect anomalies.

 

[Wombat]

I don't know exactly what their limits are. They measure the driver movement and compare with the input signal to create an error function to invert and apply. They measure, or estimate using their own method, the safe thermal and mechanical limits of the drivers to prevent damage when the correction is large. The correction is below 200 Hz so the crossover shouldn't matter.
There are speakers they classify as unsuitable. I know for some that is because the bass unit isn't exposed for their laser measurement device, maybe there are other reasons too.
Neither of the speakers I use with my Devialet have a SAM profile
The bit I don't "get" is how it works to reduce the bass -3dB point on a reflex loaded speaker.

Ditto on reflex LF EQ.

 

[Frank Dernie]

But there is one privileged information I can share with you: everything you hear coming from the speaker is result of the resonance. Driver is resonating as it is coupled with EM field to the magnet. Port is resonating . Cabinet is resonating. Speaker grill is resonating, as well as speaker stands, and the screws as well. Every part of the speaker is resonating, some coupled by EM force field, some coupled mechanically and some coupled acoustically (by vibrations sent via air). What you see in FR is the sum of all those resonancies. So tell me, why exactly is cabinet resonance, which is typically so much of a non-issue, bothering you? Only because you are seeing some cutely coloured "mountains" in CSD graph, so yeah, there must be an isse with those, right?

You are completely wrong. Go and read up about resonance. It is quite non-intuitive but if you have the aptitude and a year or so to study it you will understand and find it fascinating I'm sure.
BTW noise and vibration research was my profession.
I know at least one speaker designer who has shown cabinet resonance to be detrimental but his data is commercially confidential.
I think over the years well funded R&D departments have mainly built a lot of prototypes measured them and listened to them.
More recently computer aided methods have been used to model cabinets, drivers, magnetic circuits etc.. This is less expensive now and has explained lots of things which were simply the subject of speculation a few years ago.
It also means very good performing items can be made much cheaper, building prototypes is expensive slow and may miss key issues.

 

[thewas]

I wish also all that room had so much room gain in the bass region, my last 2 listening rooms are unfortunately the opposite in a quite wide frequency region, so I have even to bump up the EQ to reach the bass of the anechoical measurements, despite placing them very close to the front wall.