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Genelec 8030C Studio Monitor Review

thefsb

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How does the predicted far-field in-room response correspond to using the monitors on a desktop where they are less than one meter from the listener?
 

Bjorn

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The speaker exhibits a classic collapsing polar. Something that was well understood being bad already in the 70s and 80s.

With a directivity that goes from constant to collapsing so early in frequency and when the speaker is placed in a normal room with reflective surfaces, you end up with serious tonal abberations and most often a frequency response as a roller coaster where the speaker looses its directivity.
 

temps

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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?

data-bass.com has been doing objective measurements of subs for 10+ years. They even do the mix of production subs and DIY drivers. Compression testing, distortion, extension, it's all there... no spinoramas, obviously.

They are biased more towards the consumer side of things so there aren't any reviews of stuff like the Genelec or Neumann subs, but they have lots of extremely capable subs on there. The new 18" Rythmik measures out very well. If you need DSP, I think the Funk Audio subs are still the highest performing, cleanest, DSP-equipped subs they've reviewed.
 

Vintage57

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hmt

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I also guess that that type of loudspeaker (with two bass drivers and two mids) are a compromise. Afair the polar responses of the smaller far field ones like that 1234 do not look much better and they are not that much bigger than the KH420. However the S360 look very nice so it may be the case that the 123x series is a bit out of date concerning the waveguide modeling.
 

TimVG

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In many cases the (very) large Genelecs are flush mounted, and also used at distances and rooms where the far off-axis is of arguably less importance, especially when taking into account the higher directivity of these loudspeakers, meaning the reflected sounds are already x dB below the direct sound.
 

temps

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Not anymore, I don't think. Looking at the list, JTR, ZOD(DIY?) and Danley seem to be reigning kings now. Rythim FH25 is also above the top Funks, unless I'm reading it wrong.

The new Rythmiks are absolutely outstanding. If I was on the market for a pre-built subwoofer again that'd be the way I'd go. I didn't know they had parametric EQ on them now. They were actually my first choice back in the day, but there were too many issues with trying to get a pair shipped to me. I hope their distribution has improved since then.

The other ones... the Wife Acceptance Factor of most of the ultra high performance subs is about as close to zero as it gets. My Funk wasn't an especially great value even when I bought it but at least it's gorgeous.
 

richard12511

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In many cases the (very) large Genelecs are flush mounted, and also used at distances and rooms where the far off-axis is of arguably less importance, especially when taking into account the higher directivity of these loudspeakers, meaning the reflected sounds are already x dB below the direct sound.

I'd be interested in how these would fare against the BMRs in a listening test. They're similarly priced. These look more neutral, but the BMRs have much wider dispersion and better extension.
 

daftcombo

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The speaker exhibits a classic collapsing polar. Something that was well understood being bad already in the 70s and 80s.

With a directivity that goes from constant to collapsing so early in frequency and when the speaker is placed in a normal room with reflective surfaces, you end up with serious tonal abberations and most often a frequency response as a roller coaster where the speaker looses its directivity.
That sounds a bit harsh. "Serious tonal aberrations": could you be more precise?
 

richard12511

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The new Rythmiks are absolutely outstanding. If I was on the market for a pre-built subwoofer again that'd be the way I'd go. I didn't know they had parametric EQ on them now. They were actually my first choice back in the day, but there were too many issues with trying to get a pair shipped to me. I hope their distribution has improved since then.

The other ones... the Wife Acceptance Factor of most of the ultra high performance subs is about as close to zero as it gets. My Funk wasn't an especially great value even when I bought it but at least it's gorgeous.

Ah, yeah I missed the part about DSP. Rythmik doesn't do DSPd subs, afaik.

I agree about the WAF on the others. Funk subs have a somewhat unique niche of offering huge power, while maintaining visual beauty. I don't think they're a bad value at all.
 

Eetu

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Genelecs are very common (mostly cheaper models like the 8010s) here in Finland and I've gotten really tired seeing them everywhere. At the same time glad they're doing this good. If they would do a 'hifi'/far-field line with a different look I would be first in line, but then it wouldn't be Genelec..
 

Bjorn

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That sounds a bit harsh. "Serious tonal aberrations": could you be more precise?
I'm simply pointing out what the measurements shows. The speaker has a horizontal directivity of around 100° (combining both) at 2KHz. Below that the directivity is lost and already at 950 Hz the directivity has changed to 200°. Meaning there will be great shift in the reflective energy, and thus you have huge tonal changes and uneven frequency response unless your room is semi anechoic.

There's nothing good about that and the vertical suffers similar. Personally I'll much rather have a speaker with some slight uneven directivity and on-axis response but with a directivity that is remained much lower in frequency. Placed in a room with reflective surfaces, that alters the tonality much less and on-axis unevenness can be improved with EQ if it's minimum phase behaviour.
 

Biblob

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The speaker exhibits a classic collapsing polar. Something that was well understood being bad already in the 70s and 80s.

With a directivity that goes from constant to collapsing so early in frequency and when the speaker is placed in a normal room with reflective surfaces, you end up with serious tonal abberations and most often a frequency response as a roller coaster where the speaker looses its directivity.
You mean the area between 550 - 2000 Hz?

Could you share some research on this?
 

MZKM

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I'm simply pointing out what the measurements shows. The speaker has a horizontal directivity of around 100° (combining both) at 2KHz. Below that the directivity is lost and already at 950 Hz the directivity has changed to 200°. Meaning there will be great shift in the reflective energy, and thus you have huge tonal changes and uneven frequency response unless your room is semi anechoic.

There's nothing good about that and the vertical suffers similar. Personally I'll much rather have a speaker with some slight uneven directivity and on-axis response but with a directivity that is remained much lower in frequency. Placed in a room with reflective surfaces, that alters the tonality much less and on-axis unevenness can be improved with EQ if it's minimum phase behaviour.
Again, there is discussion around Amir not measuring at the correct acoustic center, that just below vertically, that dip gets filled in.
 

stunta

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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.

May I suggest you buy the speaker, rip the amp out and if amirm wants to test it, you can send it over?

Not sure if the speaker has a DSP module - if it does, do we need to test that in isolation too?

IMO, there is very little ROI with this approach given the speaker is sold with the amp built-in.
 

Bjorn

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Again, there is discussion around Amir not measuring at the correct acoustic center, that just below vertically, that dip gets filled in.
The vertical directivity collapses early in frequency vertically also and is what I'm pointing out. "Filling out a dip" has no relevance to that. This isn't a constant directivity speaker neither horizontally or vertically. Do we think the frequency range below 2 KHz or 1 KHz doesn't matter?
 

thewas

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Personally I'll much rather have a speaker with some slight uneven directivity and on-axis response but with a directivity that is remained much lower in frequency.
Which is not possible at that small (baffle) size, unless you implement something exotic like a cardioid woofer. These are small 5" "shoe-box" loudspeakers and not meant or even advised by the manufacturer to be used outside of their near field (usually less then 1,5 meters) and if some people do they still do better than most typical similar sized hifi loudspeakers which show also a baffle step transition from sphere radiation to forward radiation at a quite high mid frequency. By the way most highly appreciated loudspeakers here like the various Revels, Focal, Elac etc also don't have a very much lower baffle step frequency due to their also narrow baffles but still most people enjoy them a lot even outside their near field and even the Harman researches blind tests didn't show a different preference.
PS: That doesn't mean that I also don't enjoy loudspeakers too with a low(er) baffer step which I also prefer at higher listening distances but in the end everything is a compromise, see also WAF.
 
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jhaider

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I'm simply pointing out what the measurements shows. The speaker has a horizontal directivity of around 100° (combining both) at 2KHz. Below that the directivity is lost and already at 950 Hz the directivity has changed to 200°. Meaning there will be great shift in the reflective energy, and thus you have huge tonal changes and uneven frequency response unless your room is semi anechoic.

While I think PIR generally highly overvalued and overrated, but this is one aspect of performance that PIR would reveal. If what you write is true, then there would be a discontinuity in the PIR where the baffle ceases to function as a waveguide for the woofer. However, the PIR for this speaker (and other narrow-baffle monopoles measured) seems quite smooth in that region, and generally slopes consistently through the speaker's bandwidth.
 
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