Genelec 8361A vs 8351B

[HooStat]

Mine goes down to about 26hz before dropping off rapidly (so that at 20hz it’s down -10db). It depends a great deal on positioning and room acoustics, or course.

If you want true full-range with effectively no SPL limit in big rooms, you’ll want subwoofers. But for a desktop near field setup (with the speakers placed very near to the rear wall), you probably could get them flat almost down to 20hz with plenty of headroom for comfortable listening SPLs.

Thanks. That is helpful. I am glad you are enjoying yours. I have some 8361's arriving Tuesday, so I will test them in my room too.

 

[Pearljam5000]

I wonder how the 8361 compares to something like this Tannoy
It also has a 10 inch woofer and they're both coaxial , but it's got a gigantic cabinet in comparison

 

[Pearljam5000]

Thanks. That is helpful. I am glad you are enjoying yours. I have some 8361's arriving Tuesday, so I will test them in my room too.

Congrats, waiting for your impressions

 

[echopraxia]

I wonder how the 8361 compares to something like this Tannoy
It also has a 10 inch woofer and they're both coaxial , but it's got a gigantic cabinet in comparison
View attachment 155651

I doubt the Tannoy is anywhere near as good as the Genelec. That design looks like it would have terrible Doppler effect issues (which Genelec solves), and terrible diffraction issues from that weird trim (which Genelec’s continuous baffle cabinet shape also solves).

Maybe that would have more bass due to the larger cabinet, but for $9k each you’d be far better off with Genelec 8351/8361 stacked on top of Rythmik FV25HPs. For the same price, you’d get a total of four 15” subwoofer drivers and four 10”x4x woofers, compared to two 10” woofers that would cause really bad Doppler issues for the mids and highs coming from the middle. A pair of Genelec 8361A stacked on top of Rythmik F25HP’s would unquestionably be superior to that Tannoy in every imaginable way.

Honestly @Pearljam5000, at some point you just have to make up your mind and choose something You’re just going to have analysis paralysis if you keep trying to compare every speaker with every other speaker that shares some similarities . The science based approach helps a great deal: Depending on the SPL requirements and how much physical space your room has, it’s pretty easy to pick one or two top options that should be ideal for you.

 

[Tonygeno]

I wonder how the 8361 compares to something like this Tannoy
It also has a 10 inch woofer and they're both coaxial , but it's got a gigantic cabinet in comparison
View attachment 155651

The Tannoys do not measure well in general unlike the Genelecs, although the Hi Fi World measurements aren't bad.

Tannoy Kensington GR - page 5 - Measured Performance

 

[daftcombo]

The Tannoys do not measure well in general unlike the Genelecs, although the Hi Fi World measurements aren't bad.

Tannoy Kensington GR - page 5 - Measured Performance

Not bad, but they are so 80s!

 

[pozz]

The Tannoys do not measure well in general unlike the Genelecs, although the Hi Fi World measurements aren't bad.

Tannoy Kensington GR - page 5 - Measured Performance

Not the same model, but enjoy: https://www.fidelity-online.de/tannoy-turnberry-gr-le-alnico-messungen/

Vs.: https://www.soundandrecording.de/eq...-mit-voll-koaxialer-treiberanordnung-im-test/

Both sets of measurements by Anselm Goertz.

 

[Descartes]

Now that’s a setup!

Wish I could afford such a room watching an Sci-Fi action movie like Star Wars in ATMOS or a 4K Concert from Queen would be out of this world!

Genelec ‘The Ones’ power Morten Lindberg’s stunning immersive studio - Genelec.com

In the world of immersive music recording, no-one has done more than Grammy-winning sound engineer and music producer Morten Lindberg to set the gold standard for what can be achieved in this field. To raise the bar of sonic excellence even further, Lindberg has recently upgraded the monitoring...

www.genelec.com

 

[Pearljam5000]

How much better/louder is the 1237A compared to 8361A from these specs? ( if at all)

 

[dfuller]

How much better/louder is the 1237A compared to 8361A from these specs? ( if at all)
View attachment 160277View attachment 160278

Honestly both will get to hearing damage levels easily in any realistic scenario so don't stress it. The 1237s are definitely meant for soffit mounting though, given their design, and would be better compared to something like a Neumann KH420 (which is slightly smaller on the bass driver, and sacrifices a small amount of high SPL power for a lot more bottom end extension).

 

[Pearljam5000]

Honestly both will get to hearing damage levels easily in any realistic scenario so don't stress it.

Which one would you choose?
It's funny because the 1237A is more expensive than 8361A in most countries but for some reason it costs the same in my country

 

[dfuller]

Which one would you choose?
It's funny because the 1237A is more expensive than 8361A in most countries but for some reason it costs the same in my country

Honestly? I wouldn't choose either. For my current situation I'd just make a lateral move to ATC SCM25As, but that's not a popular opinion around these parts. If I was building a space where I could soffit mount speakers, I'd look at a pair of KH420s and call it a day, maybe throw some subs in with it. Honestly I'd get subs anyway, none of these save for the KH420s actually reliably get down into the bottom octaves.

 

[hege]

Déjà-vu? You would already be enjoying your 8361A's for a year now? How many more?

Genelec 1237A vs 8361A

They cost the same in my country so it's a dilemma! What is your opinion?

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Tangband]

Mine goes down to about 26hz before dropping off rapidly (so that at 20hz it’s down -10db). It depends a great deal on positioning and room acoustics, or course.

If you want true full-range with effectively no SPL limit in big rooms, you’ll want subwoofers. But for a desktop near field setup (with the speakers placed very near to the rear wall), you probably could get them flat almost down to 20hz with plenty of headroom for comfortable listening SPLs.

Its much easier to get good integration with two subwoofers, using both LP and HP filtering .
And one reason people often dont succed with good integration using two subwoofers is this:

1. The main loudspeaker is not perfectly installed in the room. If the main loudspeakers arent playing the bass in a good way without booming , no subwoofer in the world is gonna make the sound better. Good installation in the room for the genelec main speakers is the most important. Use your ear with music , listen how the bass-player playes his melodies and place the speaker where the music sounds the best.. It takes fine tuning down to cm and it will take a day.

2. The subs are inferior in sound quality than the main speakers, playing bass. If this is the case, the sound will always be worse with the subwoofers on, even if you got perfect integration.

 

[ferrellms]

It depends what they’re implying. If they’re implying that there are better speakers out there for mid-field listening, just because coaxials are exceptional for near-field listening, then that is fundamentally flawed logic. Genelec Ones are arguably the best speakers in the world in almost every dimension, as long as you prefer the medium-wide beam width. (I would argue that Revel and others with ultra-wide beams are better for some kinds of stereo music.) Just because they’re exceptional in near-field in ways non-coaxials can never hope to compete, doesn’t mean they’re not exceptional in mid-field and beyond too

It’s true that coaxial speakers have unique advantages, and one of them is that they sound just as good no matter how far you are from the speaker, or whether or not your ear is aligned with the tweeter height. The latter part has other significant advantages in mid-field listening. It alleviates having to stress out about correct tweeter vs listening position height. It means you can lie down on a couch and listen to music, without a modified spectral balance. It means the floor and ceiling reflections will better match the on-axis sound, leading to better sound quality overall in most rooms at any listening distance.

So Genelec Ones are exceptional in every way, at all distances. Just because most other speakers fall apart at closer listening distances doesn’t mean other speakers are better than Genelec Ones at far distances. The Genelec Ones are uniquely good coaxials because they have all the advantages of coaxials and pretty much none of the disadvantages, due to the way Genelec designed them.

If you learn how to read the Klippel off-axis polar plots, it’ll be pretty obvious where this difference comes from and what it means.

Genelec recommends less than 9.5 foot listening distance from the 8361 in order to keep the direct sound louder than the reverberant sound. I wonder about direct sound/reverberant sound ratio differences with cardioid speakers like DutchDutch and Kii. Would their directivity enable longer listening distances? Also, what about the superior directivity of these cardioid speakers in the 50-300 Hz range? One would expect less room coloration perhaps?

 

[1231rq32r1qw32r]

Its much easier to get good integration with two subwoofers, using both LP and HP filtering .
And one reason people often dont succed with good integration using two subwoofers is this:

1. The main loudspeaker is not perfectly installed in the room. If the main loudspeakers arent playing the bass in a good way without booming , no subwoofer in the world is gonna make the sound better. Good installation in the room for the genelec main speakers is the most important. Use your ear with music , listen how the bass-player playes his melodies and place the speaker where the music sounds the best.. It takes fine tuning down to cm and it will take a day.

2. The subs are inferior in sound quality than the main speakers, playing bass. If this is the case, the sound will always be worse with the subwoofers on, even if you got perfect integration.View attachment 160281

I’m sorry, but I’m having difficulty understanding that diagram. So the sub needs to be at max, 60cm from the wall. The monitors can be either 5cm OR greater than 1.1m from the wall?

 

[LTig]

I’m sorry, but I’m having difficulty understanding that diagram. So the sub needs to be at max, 60cm from the wall. The monitors can be either 5cm OR greater than 1.1m from the wall?

Correct.

 

[1231rq32r1qw32r]

Correct.

Thank you for the clarification. I’ve got some 8341s in the mail right now, I’ll need to carefully consider my layout if this is true for those too. 50mm isnt bad I guess.

 

[tifune]

Genelec recommends less than 9.5 foot listening distance from the 8361 in order to keep the direct sound louder than the reverberant sound.

Would this suggestion apply to any speaker of similar size/output? Or is there something specific about the 8361 that puts the recommendation at 9.5ft?

 

[Sancus]

Would this suggestion apply to any speaker of similar size/output? Or is there something specific about the 8361 that puts the recommendation at 9.5ft?

The Genelec chart in question is frequently misinterpreted. What it shows is the critical distance in specific example rooms. The critical distance is indeed where the direct sound is louder than reflections.

However, the critical distance(using the shortcut formula Genelec uses, it's very complex to calculate perfectly) "is affected by the room volume, the room reverberation time, and the directivity of the monitor." (see definition of critical distance at bottom right).

Genelec Ones all have very similar directivity, all that's happening is that they're calculating it for differently sized rooms based on how loud they can play, so in fact there is little if any difference in the speakers' critical distances.

In general, you can assume the narrower a speaker's dispersion, the longer the critical distance can be in any room. But there needs to be quite a significant directivity difference to affect this. Most people's typical 3-4m HiFi listening is NOT within the critical distance, the reverberant sound is dominant.