Genelec 8030C Studio Monitor Review

[thebabyparrot]

Ugh - so many good speakers recently. After the Affordable Accuracy review it's hard to justify the price jump to any of these models. This is also super close to Revel pricing.

 

[TimVG]

Great review as always @amirm
Completely reflects my own experience as an owner of the 8030C, and also several Revels including the M105. Still remember my mono evaluation of the pair and how well they both did. View attachment 74221

I also noticed (and measured) the dip, I remember trumpets especially sounding a bit less 'present' than on the Revels, but in turn, the Genelecs did other things better. There was no real loser.

The Genelec's on-axis and listening window are so close to one another that just 6 small filters make it as flat as a pancake. I'll be trying these out tomorrow myself.

View attachment 74222

Happy to say the filters make a positive difference! As always I try to balance out the on-axis/LW with respect to the estimated in-room response.
@BYRTT Care to throw them in a graph?

 

[Koeitje]

@amirm I'm curious how these are in terms of SPL versus the M105 and M106.

 

[wwenze]

Ugh - so many good speakers recently. After the Affordable Accuracy review it's hard to justify the price jump to any of these models. This is also super close to Revel pricing.

Affordable Accuracy is an outlier. The designer (or modifier?) deserved a much higher salary.

 

[VBSurrey]

Hi Amir,

Thanks for yet another excellent review. It seems we have excellent speakers from Revel, ELAC and Genelec to choose from. The only issue is that they all seem to have restricted low frequency response - 30 to 49 Hz.

Any plans to review powered sub woofers please?

 

[aac]

You're asking to measure the weight of the brake pedal, here. I'm sure you understand that it's the overall car weight (and weight distribution) that matters, not that of something that'll always be negligible in the whole picture.

And yet this forum contains a lot of "brake pedal" measurements.
should Amir just connect each amp he tests to his salon 2 and measure resulting performance, instead of using his AP?
Amplifiers aren't used separately from speakers anyway.

 

[MZKM]

Here is a detailed Klippel NFS spinorama of the KH 120:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...asurements-take-two.11323/page-22#post-425238

Thanks. I wonder is they are using the fix for early reflections.

 

[MZKM]

1236A SAM vs Revel Salon 2. Who would win ?

They polar plots are not great the price:

While not as full range and can’t get as loud, here is the Neumann flagship:

 

[Tks]

If only Genelec could give me a rear like this..

Btw bossman, are these still in the pipeline for review, or was something canceled?

 

[tomtoo]

And yet this forum contains a lot of "brake pedal" measurements.
should Amir just connect each amp he tests to his salon 2 and measure resulting performance, instead of using his AP?
Amplifiers aren't used separately from speakers anyway.

You know @amirm does a LOT of work for us. But opening each active speaker for meassuring the amps would be a crazy amount of work and time. Espeacialy when you think about, that the most of them just loaned from nice people for measurement.
So it is maybe not perfect not to measure the amps seperate. But hell the world is not perfect.

 

[FrantzM]

Hi

I was, as they say in french :"Pèpère" best translation would be just like a grandfather who just has to have fun with the grandchildren, NOT work at educating them ... and .. I saw Amir review of these gems ... noticed that ruler flat FR and excellent directivity behavior of these Genelec and all that for $1400 a pair ... !! to add insult to injury @MKZM in a follow-up post calculated a score of 8.5 (!!!!!) with subwoofer.
I am one of those who subscribes to the notion that the role of the mains is not to play bass below 80 Hz and you can imagine that from that point , I am having all sort of problems... What would it be to have 2 of these and 3 subs (Ryhtmik L12 or SVS Equivalent) in a room, better what if I go full blast and use 7 of these in a dual-purpose system with the 3 subs? Room is (6 x 4 x 3) ... miniDSP to crossover and EQ ???

Merrily confused

We are living really interesting times. Long Live ASR!!

 

[etzelo]

What a flat curve! Makes me curious about how the Genelec M030 compete.

 

[thebabyparrot]

Affordable Accuracy is an outlier. The designer (or modifier?) deserved a much higher salary.

@Dennis Murphy the GOAT (greatest of all time)

 

[thewas]

Thanks. I wonder is they are using the fix for early reflections.

I think they didn't use the mic protection cage at all.

 

[somebodyelse]

You know @amirm does a LOT of work for us. But opening each active speaker for meassuring the amps would be a crazy amount of work and time. Espeacialy when you think about, that the most of them just loaned from nice people for measurement.
So it is maybe not perfect not to measure the amps seperate. But hell the world is not perfect.

I hope we all appreciate the work @amirm puts in. Opening all of them is a non-starter as you say, but so far we don't have any reference points other than speaker price to indicate electronics performance. The performance of the electronics in a well-measuring pair of active speakers may give some valuable perspective on the performance of AVRs and less expensive power amps, and the relative price of actives vs. passives.

 

[amirm]

If only Genelec could give me a rear like this..

Btw bossman, are these still in the pipeline for review, or was something canceled?

They are here to be reviewed.

 

[amirm]

I think they didn't use the mic protection cage at all.

I am not either at the moment.

 

[tomtoo]

I hope we all appreciate the work @amirm puts in. Opening all of them is a non-starter as you say, but so far we don't have any reference points other than speaker price to indicate electronics performance. The performance of the electronics in a well-measuring pair of active speakers may give some valuable perspective on the performance of AVRs and less expensive power amps, and the relative price of actives vs. passives.

Iam shure there are huge differences in this amp modules active speakers use. But like you sayed nearly no way to measure them all. And if you measure one it says nothing about other modules. Not perfect, yes.
Edit says: @amirm did a test of a Nubert amp. They did use there modul for active speaker. Vor a standalone amp not so great. But yamaha does maybe different? Interesting questions but hard to answer.

 

[Robbo99999]

I'm surprised this speaker turned to static with the The Dunwells Animal track, because after listening to that one on my Sennheiser HD600 headphones (which are Oratory EQ'd to Harman Curve that only start dropping away from 40Hz and are only 2dB under at 30Hz)....that Animal track didn't seem to have crazy amounts of bass, I mean it's all there in the kick drum (think it's called that), but sure wouldn't want to listen to that speaker trying to play Inertia Creeps by Massive Attack.....I think it might prolapse! Otherwise it seems like a fine speaker. To be honest I wouldn't want to own one without a sub given some of the music I listen to. I wonder what point you'd have to crossover these with a sub to avoid the static & distortion that was mentioned on the Animal track?

EDIT: I'm guessing around 180Hz you might need to cross it over given the distortion graph at 96dB in following link (although I have no experience with subs)?
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...itor-review.14795/#lg=attachment74165&slide=0

 

[Robbo99999]

How do you think they would fair in a living room for music? How do you think they would fair in a living room for movies?

Not without a sub.