Considering the purchase of 8361A

[Xormungar]

I'm considering purchasing the Genelec 8361A pair, but I'm wondering if there are soon gonna be any new models around, or even, how much room there is for improvement beyond 8361A's performance?

 

[dfuller]

Doubt it.

I would consider listening to everything in that price range that appeals. I personally preferred the KH420s and D&D 8Cs to the 8361s, but YMMV.

 

[AudioJester]

The way to improve the 8361a is the W371 bass units.
Locally to me the 8361a is almost 50% cheaper than than the D&D 8c.

If your willing to wait a while the Ascilabs catdioid designs are very interesting.

 

[Ziltoe]

Looking at Genelec.com, models replacing the 8361 [in its specifications] aren't in the vicinity.

And yes, as dfuller did mention, listen to various speakers in that price range of the 8361.

Spinorama.org has some measurements:

8361 vs KH420

8361 vs D&D 8C

 

[Xormungar]

Looking at Genelec.com, models replacing the 8361 [in its specifications] aren't in the vicinity.

And yes, as dfuller did mention, listen to various speakers in that price range of the 8361.

Spinorama.org has some measurements:

8361 vs KH420

8361 vs D&D 8C

I have a pretty small room so I think coaxial is the way to go, plus I have heard the 8361A's and was absolutely stunned. On the other hand, I have never heard KH420 nor D&D 8C.

 

[Ziltoe]

What, in your case, means "small room" ? What would be the listening distance?

 

[Xormungar]

What, in your case, means "small room" ? What would be the listening distance?

About 1.2m. But I want the 10" drivers because of bass; the current 1032A aren't too big.

The 1032A are also for sale, if anyone in EU is interested
Also, if anyone has 8361A for sale in EU, I'd be interested.

 

[unpluggged]

About 1.2m. But I want the 10" drivers because of bass

Then get a pair of Neumann KH 120 II and the KH 750 DSP with the MA 1 kit. This is everything you'll ever need for your listening distance.

 

[Ziltoe]

[.../] "on the planet" [\...] Was just a bit laughing about it...

~ 1,2m well, yes. Understand yours but a 8361 is not necessarily required having a "good" bass. Smaller Genelec [or other brands] can do as well. Are you intending to use room correction tools / measures? What is your current speaker?

 

[Xormungar]

View attachment 450182

[.../] "on the planet" [\...] Was just a bit laughing about it...

~ 1,2m well, yes. Understand yours but a 8361 is not necessarily required having a "good" bass. Smaller Genelec [or other brands] can do as well. Are you intending to use room correction tools / measures? What is your current speaker?

I'm intending to use GLM + SonarWorks (if necessary). I was using Focal Trio6 Be up until couple of days ago. Now I'm left with Genelec 1032A's and a DynAudio 18S subwoofer which are both on sale.

 

[Ziltoe]

What's wrong with the Focal Trio6 Be respectively with the Genelec 1032A? IMO they are both very decent and capable monitors.

 

[Xormungar]

What's wrong with the Focal Trio6 Be respectively with the Genelec 1032A? IMO they are both very decent and capable monitors.

They're just not on the same level as the 8361A from my experience. Perhaps I'd prefer the Focal's if they had a waveguide for the tweeter and midrange. Also, if they were coaxial. To me, the only thing that could be better than the 8361A's would maybe be 8361A with a beryllium tweeter. Maybe.

I even prefer the 1032A over Trio6 Be because of larger bass driver and more linearity. Trio6 Be only wins in a way because it's a 3-way. So a 3-way Genelec is my dream speaker.

Trio6 had a decent sound when I'd put my palms around my ears (as an "extension" for the ear lobes), which is what Genelec's achieve with a proper waveguide.

But to be honest, I'm suffering from "upgradeitis", that may be the greatest reason of them all. Now that I'm done with my search, I'm doing more productive work. Other times, I was always searching for what was on the market, what I could improve, buy or exchange.

 

[Xormungar]

Then get a pair of Neumann KH 120 II and the KH 750 DSP with the MA 1 kit. This is everything you'll ever need for your listening distance.

For me, there's no going back to 2-way after trying out a proper 3-way speaker.

 

[Ziltoe]

Oki, however, I would stick with the 1032A instead of buying the 8361 since you won't make a considerable improvement. Understand you definitely want a 3-way construction.

A bit out of context but [IMO] interesting:

. discussion about 3 vs 2 ways
. your Trio, KH and the Adam

 

[Nih Noh]

You can get the 8361A's, but they still won't have the bass you need.

Get the 8351B's (same tweeter and midrange) and a couple fat subs. Equalize using GLM or Dirac and live a fruitful life.

 

[alankila]

You aren't going to go wrong in terms of sound quality with 8361A. I really wish Genelec talked more about any improvements they are possibly making, but something like 8361A is already near ideal speaker, so there isn't much left. More directivity in low bass and better low frequency extension -- these are the kind of things you get with W371A, but one of those costs like 10 grand and you have to have two, so it's becomes a pretty costly proposal.

You can maybe save couple of grand by choosing 8351B. The specs are barely different, including the frequency response. Genelec went for SPL rather than low frequency extension with the 8361A. I think relatively few people will care about how precisely loud the units can get, but saving something like 20 % in the cost and having a unit that you can lift much easier is worth something extra in practice. The 14 kg for 8351B is pretty heavy, but it is manageable, whereas the 32 kg for the 8361A is strictly in gymrat territory.

I personally have 8351B pair and a 7370A here, integrated by hand after some analysis work in REW and a custom equalization. I imagine that if I were to do this all over again, I'd probably be sitting in front of Dutch & Dutch 8c, instead. You'd trade the worse vertical directivity of the 8c with the improved bass extension and the directivity control to about 100 Hz, and I think that trade probably will favor the 8c.

 

[Nih Noh]

You aren't going to go wrong in terms of sound quality with 8361A. I really wish Genelec talked more about any improvements they are possibly making, but something like 8361A is already near ideal speaker, so there isn't much left. More directivity in low bass and better low frequency extension -- these are the kind of things you get with W371A, but one of those costs like 10 grand and you have to have two, so it's becomes a pretty costly proposal.

You can maybe save couple of grand by choosing 8351B. The specs are barely different, including the frequency response. Genelec went for SPL rather than low frequency extension with the 8361A. I think relatively few people will care about how precisely loud the units can get, but saving something like 20 % in the cost and having a unit that you can lift much easier is worth something extra in practice. The 14 kg for 8351B is pretty heavy, but it is manageable, whereas the 32 kg for the 8361A is strictly in gymrat territory.

I personally have 8351B pair and a 7370A here, integrated by hand after some analysis work in REW and a custom equalization. I imagine that if I were to do this all over again, I'd probably be sitting in front of Dutch & Dutch 8c, instead. You'd trade the worse vertical directivity of the 8c with the improved bass extension and the directivity control to about 100 Hz, and I think that trade probably will favor the 8c.

Why wouldn't you use the GLM that you paid for to EQ speakers? Doing it by hand is primitive and lackluster.

 

[alankila]

Why wouldn't you use the GLM that you paid for to EQ speakers? Doing it by hand is primitive and lackluster.

I've used GLM before, but as soon as I started deviating from the GLM way of doing bass management, and wanting to shape the audio according to a different response curve, value of GLM became somewhat reduced to me. I ended up zeroing the filter and then writing some of the Spinorama far field eq filters for 8351B into the unit's built-in DSP, as I discovered that there are about 0.5 dB errors somewhere above 2 kHz which vanish if you use the automatically derived far-field eq.

GLM has one issue which is that sound character profiler, the standard way to tune response in GLM, only applies the corrections to the monitors, not to the sub. When you cross over, the sub is integrated at wrong SPL which kind of sucks, too. I am not impressed with GLM and I think it's decent only for studio professional type of application, but it has limited value to consumer that might not want to create a flat in-room response.

I already posted the frequency response I want in another thread, and I've not been able to get anything as nice as this with GLM. The bass management forced something like +20 ms of excess group delay after the crossover at around 80 Hz, which I suspected is audible and seemed to make the bass sound pretty lackluster in the room -- worse than what I used to have without 7370A, so I decided to integrate without a crossover as such, just slighlty tweak the common passband using filters. This uses all the woofers in the room to make the bass together at once.

The way I'm doing it, I have 20 ms at about 20 Hz where I think it's the room acoustis doing it, mostly, and even the bass is better than what I used to have without the subwoofer in my opinion.

 

[Nih Noh]

I think you made a mistake. GLM integrates the sub. You need to figure this out.

 

[alankila]

I think you made a mistake. GLM integrates the sub. You need to figure this out.

Sure, GLM integrates the sub. I just thought the integration wasn't very good. More low bass < 30 Hz, sure, because 8351B are lacking there. But I didn't like the bass in the 30-80 Hz region very much.