• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Genelec 8030C Studio Monitor Review

How is it that the Genelecs sound so good with relatively not such expensive drivers?
Because drivers don't matter as much as integration. As long as they're reasonably decent, they will work fine.
 
Not technically.

The computed score numbers have rather limited use and accuracy.

There are definitely better speakers than the 8030C, even if you offload bass to an external Amp.

It's still a damn good speaker though.
I see. I am interested in which equalized speakers + subwoofer perform best at a distance of 1.74 meters in a well-treated room.
 
Its the best speaker eqed with sub you can ask right? According to spinorama
By frequency response and spinorama Neumann 120 KH II is better, as I remember.

I had both at home some months ago, is surprising how different two speakers could sound in a room showing a lot of similarities on measurements.

Can probably be due to my lack of knowledge about spinorama though. Perhaps they aren’t as similar as I think…
 
There are so many technically superior speakers from Genelec, Neumann, KEF, Kii, D&D, Asci, JBL, ...

For the price though, the 8030C is hard to beat.
But in which areas does it make them superior? Because at least, in principle, in on-axis + off-axis, it doesn't, right?
 
How is it that the Genelecs sound so good with relatively not such expensive drivers?

It's been posted here many times before that the "not expensive drivers" idea is not necessarily the case, or at least the drivers appear to be good quality, with large magnets and so on. As for the rest, as noted many times before as well, R&D, relying on the science, the cast aluminum enclosures, and solid design approaches like making coaxials three-way so the midbass driver doesn't have to go too low (which can create vibrations that can mess with the waveguide behavior of the midbass driver on the treble driver), and like having treble waveguides for their two-way non-coaxialss like the 8030C's, so as to produce smooth directivity across the crossover region.
 
I don’t remember spinorama results but frequency response of Neumann is even more accurate than 8030.

Personally I prefer the Genelecs but is a subjective opinion
 
By frequency response and spinorama Neumann 120 KH II is better, as I remember.

I had both at home some months ago, is surprising how different two speakers could sound in a room showing a lot of similarities on measurements.

Can probably be due to my lack of knowledge about spinorama though. Perhaps they aren’t as similar as I think…
8030c equalized + sub is 9. Neumann 8.8. But there is margin for error
 
8030c equalized + sub is 9. Neumann 8.8. But there is margin for error
Concluding from that that the 8030c is superior is misguided, for the reasons stated above.

Use the preference scores as a rough guideline for overall speaker quality (maybe ±1-2 PR accuracy), nothing more.

For actual quality, you'll have to look into the individual measurements.
 
Concluding from that that the 8030c is superior is misguided, for the reasons stated above.

Use the preference scores as a rough guideline for overall speaker quality (maybe ±1-2 PR accuracy), nothing more.

For actual quality, you'll have to look into the individual measurements.
Preferences scores are average from members opinions or they are technical numbers?

By “preference” I interpret that are just subjective score, but since I’m not english native I have some doubts
 
It's been posted here many times before that the "not expensive drivers" idea is not necessarily the case, or at least the drivers appear to be good quality, with large magnets and so on. As for the rest, as noted many times before as well, R&D, relying on the science, the cast aluminum enclosures, and solid design approaches like making coaxials three-way so the midbass driver doesn't have to go too low (which can create vibrations that can mess with the waveguide behavior of the midbass driver on the treble driver), and like having treble waveguides for their two-way non-coaxialss like the 8030C's, so as to produce smooth directivity across the crossover region.
Yeah what mean is
If Genelec can do it and sound so good with not such expensive drivers, why can't other brands do it with even more expensive drivers, cabinets?
Why don't all brands rely on science and sound as good as Genelec?
 
Yeah what mean is
If Genelec can do it and sound so good with not such expensive drivers, why can't other brands do it with even more expensive drivers, cabinets?
Why don't all brands rely on science and sound as good as Genelec?
Other brands do. Neumann, D&D, Kii all use relatively cheap drivers (well, mostly).


My understanding is that the tweeter Neumann has Peerless make for them is a variation on a $20 part. Kii uses relatively low cost Peerless drivers, minus the customized Seas DXT tweeter. D&D uses relatively cheap seas midrange and tweeter, with most of the driver cost coming from the wavecor subs.
 
Last edited:
Being a traditional 2-way design with analog crossover, there are areas like vertical directivity, on-axis linearity, and THD where more expensive monitors can best the 8030C.
But I see that the vertical directivity is included in the spinorama measurements. That should affect the in-room response. Is it possible that the measurements are made in a single point and if you change your position a little you lose more coherence, than another with lower score but better response in more zones? If so, why don't they measure using the MMM method?
 
But I see that the vertical directivity is included in the spinorama measurements.
Is it possible that the measurements are made in a single point
Amir's vertical directivity measurement was created using 1000+ individual measurements taken 360° all around the speaker.

All automated using the $100K Klippel NFS measurement rig.
 
Amir's vertical directivity measurement was created using 1000+ individual measurements taken 360° all around the speaker.

All automated using Klippel's $100K "Nearfield Scanner" measurement rig.
I figured the problem wouldn’t be in their measurements haha

Then I don’t understand how measuring the vertical frequency results in such a high total score. There must be some concept I’m missing. Thank you very much for your explanations
 
I figured the problem wouldn’t be in their measurements haha

Then I don’t understand how measuring the vertical frequency results in such a high total score. There must be some concept I’m missing. Thank you very much for your explanations
I’m reading the original article of Olive about a mathematical model predicting preferences from anechoic measurements, and vertical directivity is not included on the model.

I suppose that early reflexions and sound power compiles the horizontal and vertical radiations. Statistical models give predictions based on numbers that resume whole functions (for example Olive used Absolute Average Deviation from the frequency response curve, not the whole function).

As he used more than 20 variables, each of one is weighted for relevance to the predictability of the preference, is perfectly possible that a speaker with poor vertical directivity gives a high score.

But each measurement can be analyzed by the user individually, if for example vertical directivity is crucial for some reason to the subject, and it weights more than other variables (and remember that is not included in the model and arguably make part of ER and SP measurements and statistics).

The article is really interesting, though as StaticV3 mentioned is not useful to predict highly accurate the real final preferences.
 
Back
Top Bottom