Genelec 8010A Powered Studio Monitor Review

[ElNino]

I'm curious about that port noise at 1kHz... what is the physical cause? Is that (i) a pipe resonance, or is it (ii) some kind of focused midrange leakage or (iii) whistling associated with port chuffing?

 

[Joachim Herbert]

Please don't make casually sexist comments like this. It's not based in fact, it's not inclusive and it doesn't add anything to the conversation.

C'mon.

 

[SynthesisCinema]

This brings up memories.. Hope you don`t mind.

British gentleman barber who i used to visit for years before moving out had these well the G1 model as below in picture. He liked them so much that he bought second pair for home as i was intrested why he picked Genelecs. He always played old classic rock songs and we had great chats. Good old days..

 

[andreasmaaan]

The small box shouldn't make it any harder at all.
The same basic principles apply no matter the box size, and actually since it won't need any bracing it is likely easier to make it.
The one thing that can hold up some small box designs is that an optimal port may not fit inside the box beyond that you have you driver parameters and you run the numbers and calculate the box size and port and then test to ensure you have what you indented.

I have to partially disagree. Yes, the small box means less need for bracing. But it's still the case that, the smaller the box, the more likely pipe resonances in the port are going to be excited, since (1) if port area (and thus compression) is held constant as box size decreases, the port is going to have to be longer and (2) internal damping, which can be used to reduce excitation of the pipe resonances and reduce “spill”, becomes more difficult.

 

[Aerial Acoustic Guy]

Hi, I am considering using 4 each Genelec 4010 (almost identical to the 8010) as on ceiling Atmos speakers. I would set the crossover at 80 HZ. Any thoughts?

 

[AudioSceptic]

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:

View attachment 88477

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:

View attachment 88478

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:

View attachment 88479

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:

View attachment 88480

Early window reflections are near perfect which means this speaker will be very room friendly and not picky about placement:

View attachment 88481

Summing all of this together, we seen a speaker with very nice response albeit, with a bit of bass boost:

View attachment 88482

The amplifiers for the woofer and tweeter are just 25 watts. I suspect the amp is clipping before the woofer is:

View attachment 88483

View attachment 88484

I don't have the heart to show you the 96 dB SPL response.

Directivity is good:

View attachment 88485

View attachment 88486

The small woofer naturally has wide beamwidth at lower frequencies than a larger woofer would.

Vertical response also benefits from smaller woofer:

View attachment 88487

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:

View attachment 88488

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/

Not bad for the money, considering that amps are included. As for scale, I don't know how big the panthers are, or even if they are all the same size, so why not simply stand a 12" ruler or a CD case (or even a vinyl LP sleeve!) against the speakers when you photograph them, so we have an easy reference?

 

[JohnBooty]

True but who is mixing on these? Maybe you tubers or something, no way albums are mixed on these. In any case, why not just have a switch to turn the compressor on and off?
I mean this is $700 for very small speakers, I think such a feature is more than warranted.

Yeah, I was kind of curious about the actual market for these.

Who is "serious" enough about audio production to spend $700 on some studio monitors, but doesn't want to devote an extra 2-3" of desk space to fit something larger? Are these strictly targeted at mobile production vans or something?

I'm not asking facetiously. I don't do audio production, so I am surely missing obvious facts.

Hi, I am considering using 4 each Genelec 4010 (almost identical to the 8010) as on ceiling Atmos speakers. I would set the crossover at 80 HZ. Any thoughts?

Their port is in the back, so you'll need some space between the speaker and the wall.

They will not get very loud. They are advertised as putting out 96dB of sound. Presumably at 1M or 2M? I generally follow the forumla of "intended listening volume, plus 20dB of dynamic headroom" especially for highly dynamic content like movies. So to me these would only be good for 76dB at 1M or 2M... nice for a small room but not much bigger. But perhaps that is okay for the Atmos channels since they are primarily used for ambient SFX (almost never for vocals or music) and not sustained loud output anyway.

For home theater use, I am not sure about the value proposition. Surely you will be running room correction anyway, so the excellent uncorrected response of the Genelecs is somewhat of a moot advantage. I am not sure what these sell for exactly but I suspect you would have an identical experience with much less expensive speakers. Unless I had a truly unconstrained budget I would probably be inclined to put that money elsewhere in the system.

 

[AudioSceptic]

I'm literally shocked, this is a serious case for international lawsuit

View attachment 88554

How many know that pink hasn't even always been considered a "feminine" colour? 5.6 Gender

Edit: changed "female" to "feminine"!

 

[andreasmaaan]

Yeah, I was kind of curious about the actual market for these.

Who is "serious" enough about audio production to spend $700 on some studio monitors, but doesn't want to devote an extra 2-3" of desk space to fit something larger? Are these strictly targeted at mobile production vans or something?

I'm not asking facetiously. I don't do audio production, so I am surely missing obvious facts.

I’ve seen these in home studios, but never as the primary monitors. It seemed in both of those cases they were bought kind of as toys: a novelty because they were little and cute and had surprisingly good sound. Have also wondered whether people who will actually use them to mix music is the intended market.

 

[maverickronin]

Yeah, I was kind of curious about the actual market for these.

Who is "serious" enough about audio production to spend $700 on some studio monitors, but doesn't want to devote an extra 2-3" of desk space to fit something larger? Are these strictly targeted at mobile production vans or something?

I'm not asking facetiously. I don't do audio production, so I am surely missing obvious facts.

There are already some good answers in this thread.

"Professional monitor" doesn't only mean that they're intended for someone who is mixing albums. There's lots and lots of other audio use cases that are considered professional besides recording engineer or mastering engineer. There are radio stations that need to monitor how their broadcast sounds - think talk radio, not a lot of sub-bass there. There are FBI guys sitting listening to wiseguys wearing wires.... FAA crash investigators listening to recovered cockpit voice recorders.... ornithologists listening to birdsong.... and let's not belittle YouTubers, quite a few of them make 6-figure annual incomes off of their channels. There's LOTS of professional situations where clean, uncolored audio playback is needed but where there isn't going to be all that much content below 100 Hz.

More importantly, from reviewing speakers and getting reader questions and feedback, it's become clear to me that people who buy small speakers buy them because:
1) it is what their budget allows, as small speakers are usually cheaper
2) they actually want small speakers for their particular space/aesthetics/whatever

So the argument of "just buy bigger speakers" is usually DoA. For some people, the difference between a 3" a 5" speaker is significant.

 

[Koeitje]

I really dislike anything with a single woofer under 5". Never heard a speakers with a smaller woofer that had enough power in the low-end.

 

[Jake71]

The 5% distortion at 100 Hz at just 86dB/1m sounds a bit high, but I guess in most cases these speakers would be sitting on a desk right in front of you so 86dB might be a reasonable level.

 

[digitalfrost]

I'm really sorry but this is actually "on topic" :

Spoiler: say "volume" in finnish

View attachment 88540

Spoiler: and in german it's...

LAUTSTÄRKE​

 

[ctrl]

Everything looks fine except for the jaggyness throughout the mids to highs. Why is that?

Likely that port resonance is out of Phase with the drivers around 1k.
The enclosure is very narrow so the edge diffractions are kicking in, that is my best guess.
The cabinet is rounded on the edge like Genelec's larger models but due to small size of the enclosure the round-overs are small and thus far less effective especially since the diffractions are starting in the midrange due to the small size. (on a typical larger box the effects would start at higher frequency's easier to affect with round overs & other cabinet shaping)

Agree with you, around 1kHz the BR port resonances most likely play a role in the jagged FR.
The crossover frequency of the 8010A is 3kHz, so the low midrange driver works into the low treble.

Due to the small baffle width, the horizontal edge diffraction of the bass-midrange driver is not important, because it is much higher than the crossover frequency - the first minimum of edge diffraction is about 5kHz.
The upper and lower baffle edges are at different distances from the bass-midrange driver, so even these interferences have no great influence on the axis frequency response.

My guess would be that the chassis itself, besides the BR port resonances, is responsible for the jagged axis frequency response. In @amirm's near field measurement of the chassis you can already see it - among other things, these could be surround resonances.

 

[Robbo99999]

Looks like a really good set of speakers, but definitely needs a sub!

 

[EchoChamber]

Found these nice cut photos of bigger brother 8020B (older gen., current is "D"):

Spoiler: 8020B cross section photos

src1, src2

+ nice pro audition test/comparison:
A discussion on studio monitors:
We brought together Sapphire Slows, Wata Igarashi, Gonno, Sauce81 and Taiji Okuda to test some of the best monitors for electronic music production under €800.

Newer ones have updated circuits with a switching power supply (no toroidal transformer) that are more efficient, much lighter and feature auto-sleep (ISS is not set by default). When ON and idling power consumption is already very low, but lower if you set it to auto-sleep...

 

[q3cpma]

Found these nice cut photos of bigger brother 8020B (older gen., current is "D"):

Spoiler: 8020B cross section photos

src1, src2

+ nice pro audition test/comparison:
A discussion on studio monitors:
We brought together Sapphire Slows, Wata Igarashi, Gonno, Sauce81 and Taiji Okuda to test some of the best monitors for electronic music production under €800.

PCB says 8030A, though.

 

[teej]

Really enjoy the harvest updates, Amir. My subdivision was built on a hard clay ridge, so planting is a challenge. Do you consider yourself a prepper?

 

[neutralguy]

incredibly tonality with a warm sound

Is there anything in the measurements that would have predicted this "warm" sound? The frequency response does not look too tilted, and many other speakers have that 100-200hz hump. What if you eq'd it to whatever is supposed to sound neutral, would that make it less warm?

 

[EchoChamber]

Hmm, so I wonder how close the -2db bass switch on the back would get them without eq.

I think there is a good argument that there is no such thing as a "default" setting for any compensation controls on speakers like this. There is only a correct setting for use.

My understanding is that Genelec monitors are tuned to be flat in free space or anechoic chamber. Room resonances and bass reinforcement are expected to be tamed using the built in EQ (or GLM for SAM monitors). The nice thing about lowering the bass is that you get a lot more headroom... :-D