This is a review and detailed measurements of the Genelec 8010A Powered Studio Monitor (speaker). It was kindly purchased by a member and drop shipped to me for testing. It costs US $350 each for $700 for a pair.
I don't know that the scale comes across in this picture but the 8010A is tiny:
The 3 inch woofer enables it to be small. Being made out of the same aluminum material of its larger brothers, it is every bit as study and tough.
The figure 8 power cable and XLR get inserted vertically so you need to make sure the latter does not have too long of a strain relief or it may hit your desk:
I performed both measurements and listening tests with all switches in their default position as you see.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I used over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of slightly above 1% in the lower treble frequencies.
Temperature was 68 degrees. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
The reference axis was as instructed in the manual: the top of the woofer. I also tested it with tweeter axis and it made no difference.
Note that with powered monitors, the computed SPL is not correct with Klippel NFS. I manually compensate for that it is not exact.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
We don't have ruler flat on-axis response but the variations sans the 1 kHz are small. There is a bit of of bass boost though.
Back to 1 kHz, we can see the port producing undesirable response around that region:
Early window reflections are near perfect which means this speaker will be very room friendly and not picky about placement:
Summing all of this together, we seen a speaker with very nice response albeit, with a bit of bass boost:
The amplifiers for the woofer and tweeter are just 25 watts. I suspect the amp is clipping before the woofer is:
I don't have the heart to show you the 96 dB SPL response.
Directivity is good:
The small woofer naturally has wide beamwidth at lower frequencies than a larger woofer would.
Vertical response also benefits from smaller woofer:
You have much more leeway as far as vertical placement although it is still advised to have the tweeter pointed at you.
Genelec 8010A Speaker Listening Test
I placed the 8010A on the left side of my monitor on my 5 inch high stand as I always do. First impression was superb: this thing has incredibly tonality with a warm sound that belies its small size. I know it is a cliché and I hate the term it is absolutely unbelievable how much bass comes out of this speaker. In comparison, it made my Neumann KH80 DSP sound dull. Track after track in my play list sounded superb. Excellent tonality, detail and dynamics. This is no flat sounding studio monitor.
There is however a major flaw: hit anything with deep bass and the 8010A will complain with the worst crackle you can imagine. It goes from amazing to wow, this thing just broke! Strangely, I could not filter out the lows enough to get rid of this effect while preserving that gorgeous amount of bass.
If you are using the 8010A for pro work (mixing) you should be aware of its warmer tilt and perhaps correct for that.
Conclusions
If you want to get a taste of what I call sonic perfection in a small package, get the Genelec 8010A. Don't play it too loud or too deep and you will be presented with delightful sound that simply does not come in a package this small. Yes, $700 is a lot of money for small speakers but if you enjoy music as much as I do while working, you owe it to yourself to at least try these out.
My only wish -- and one that remains with all Genelec speakers -- is to have a dynamic compressor for bass. JBL has this to good effect. A speaker shouldn't go from hero to zero like these speakers do when they run out of power. Then again maybe this is a motivation to buy the much larger Genelecs to be free of this restriction!
Needless to say, it is my pleasure to my the Genelec 8010A on my recommended list.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Have to go and help my wife cut and freeze the last of our nice pepper harvest this year:
Planted the smaller and oddly shaped ones this year that you see mixed with the larger ones (forget the name). Was surprised how much tastier they were than the normal "California Wonder" that everyone plants.
There may be another shortage of seed next year so need to stock up now. So an infusion of cash from you all in the form of donations would be nice: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I don't know that the scale comes across in this picture but the 8010A is tiny:
The 3 inch woofer enables it to be small. Being made out of the same aluminum material of its larger brothers, it is every bit as study and tough.
The figure 8 power cable and XLR get inserted vertically so you need to make sure the latter does not have too long of a strain relief or it may hit your desk:
I performed both measurements and listening tests with all switches in their default position as you see.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I used over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of slightly above 1% in the lower treble frequencies.
Temperature was 68 degrees. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
The reference axis was as instructed in the manual: the top of the woofer. I also tested it with tweeter axis and it made no difference.
Note that with powered monitors, the computed SPL is not correct with Klippel NFS. I manually compensate for that it is not exact.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
We don't have ruler flat on-axis response but the variations sans the 1 kHz are small. There is a bit of of bass boost though.
Back to 1 kHz, we can see the port producing undesirable response around that region:
Early window reflections are near perfect which means this speaker will be very room friendly and not picky about placement:
Summing all of this together, we seen a speaker with very nice response albeit, with a bit of bass boost:
The amplifiers for the woofer and tweeter are just 25 watts. I suspect the amp is clipping before the woofer is:
I don't have the heart to show you the 96 dB SPL response.
Directivity is good:
The small woofer naturally has wide beamwidth at lower frequencies than a larger woofer would.
Vertical response also benefits from smaller woofer:
You have much more leeway as far as vertical placement although it is still advised to have the tweeter pointed at you.
Genelec 8010A Speaker Listening Test
I placed the 8010A on the left side of my monitor on my 5 inch high stand as I always do. First impression was superb: this thing has incredibly tonality with a warm sound that belies its small size. I know it is a cliché and I hate the term it is absolutely unbelievable how much bass comes out of this speaker. In comparison, it made my Neumann KH80 DSP sound dull. Track after track in my play list sounded superb. Excellent tonality, detail and dynamics. This is no flat sounding studio monitor.
There is however a major flaw: hit anything with deep bass and the 8010A will complain with the worst crackle you can imagine. It goes from amazing to wow, this thing just broke! Strangely, I could not filter out the lows enough to get rid of this effect while preserving that gorgeous amount of bass.
If you are using the 8010A for pro work (mixing) you should be aware of its warmer tilt and perhaps correct for that.
Conclusions
If you want to get a taste of what I call sonic perfection in a small package, get the Genelec 8010A. Don't play it too loud or too deep and you will be presented with delightful sound that simply does not come in a package this small. Yes, $700 is a lot of money for small speakers but if you enjoy music as much as I do while working, you owe it to yourself to at least try these out.
My only wish -- and one that remains with all Genelec speakers -- is to have a dynamic compressor for bass. JBL has this to good effect. A speaker shouldn't go from hero to zero like these speakers do when they run out of power. Then again maybe this is a motivation to buy the much larger Genelecs to be free of this restriction!
Needless to say, it is my pleasure to my the Genelec 8010A on my recommended list.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Have to go and help my wife cut and freeze the last of our nice pepper harvest this year:
Planted the smaller and oddly shaped ones this year that you see mixed with the larger ones (forget the name). Was surprised how much tastier they were than the normal "California Wonder" that everyone plants.
There may be another shortage of seed next year so need to stock up now. So an infusion of cash from you all in the form of donations would be nice: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
