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Genelec 8341A SAM™ Studio Monitor Review

JAP

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In another thread I wrote that small studio monitors are engineered for studio use and most of the time, even if they perform flawlessy, are not that good for home use in particular if your listening point is 2/3 meters away or if you have a mid/large size room. Seems to me that it's confirmed. Benchmark FR but at 1 meter.

Doesn't apply to The Ones really. They perform exceptionally in normal listening rooms. Bigger is obviously better. You get more headroom and larger waveguide which makes sound more convincing. Even smallest model 8331A is great @ 2-3 meter distance. I have had 8351A (now using 8361A) and in normal room it's very hard to hit the limits of the speaker. 8341A plays actually louder than previous 8351. In bigger heavily acoustically treated rooms even 8361A will run out of juice eventually. Normal ears probably give up a lot earlier...
 

thefsb

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Usually, you build the walls around them, not the reverse.

Like this.

1582493167442.png


Note also the NS-10 pair, for which I'd like to see measurements. My 3rd album was mixed using NS-10s.
 

FrantzM

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Hi

We may complain and discuss all we want about the price. This remains one stellar case where the price is inline with the performances.. This is what High End Audio should have been about ... Performances commensurate with price.

Makes you wonder how good their larger (and more expensive) models would be.
 

andreasmaaan

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Very happy to see the first really excellent speaker measured here :) I've monitored on these and they are excellent.

For people who've used Neumann KH120, these go significantly louder FWIW (and sound much better IMO). Not Amir-level loud perhaps, but loud enough that for at least some people they'll have enough juice for home listening.
 

bigx5murf

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I think we need to see the Behringer truth now,, as it's a knockoff of an older genelec design, for peanuts.
 

Tks

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No. Those are also for near field work. For loud, switch to the main monitors, e.g. for 130 dB SPL you could use the https://www.genelec.com/1236a

Just wanted to ask because it never crossed my mind since I'm not too much of a speaker guy. When someone says mid or far field, does that mean those sorts of speakers sacrifice performance at near-field use as a result, or does it mean they're so good, that they do near field well, mid field well, and far field well?
 

Sancus

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Just wanted to ask because it never crossed my mind since I'm not too much of a speaker guy. When someone says mid or far field, does that mean those sorts of speakers sacrifice performance at near-field use as a result, or does it mean they're so good, that they do near field well, mid field well, and far field well?

It depends. Some speakers have a minimum distance for the drivers to integrate properly due to their spacing/design.

In this case, it doesn't matter, because the coaxial driver is well integrated at pretty much any listening distance. So nearfield/midfield/farfield is just a loudness issue.
 

tuga

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And the mostly useless waterfall graph:

index.php

This looks a bit terrible below 1K and the vertical scale is only 15dB wide but that is probably because the time scale is only 3.5ms wide.
It would help if you could use the same width from speaker to speaker.

As it is it is mostly useless indeed.

index.php
 

JAP

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Just wanted to ask because it never crossed my mind since I'm not too much of a speaker guy. When someone says mid or far field, does that mean those sorts of speakers sacrifice performance at near-field use as a result, or does it mean they're so good, that they do near field well, mid field well, and far field well?

The Ones are point source loudspeakers which means that they will produce coherent sound at very short listening distances. This doesn't sacrafice any performance at longer distances. Longer distance just means that the room will have more effect on the result. Exactly like with every other speaker there is. Point source design will provide bigger sweet spot like seen in the graphs above. To produce sound to really long distances (like main monitors) you need a lot of spl capacity. The Ones are not the right choice for 10-15 m distances. You need something like 1234 1236 or newer S360. Or perhaps pair of W371 + 8341A/8351B/8361A in certain conditions.

Check out this video:
 
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amirm

amirm

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This looks a bit terrible below 1K and the vertical scale is only 15dB wide but that is probably because the time scale is only 3.5ms wide.
It would help if you could use the same width from speaker to speaker.

As it is it is mostly useless indeed.
No worries. You tell me what you want the graph to look like and I can make it so. Santa Clause? No problem. A bunny? No worries. An elephant? Piece of cake....
 

kaka89

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Wondering how does it compares with new age speakers like D&D 8C and Kii.

8C leverages a cardioid pattern, which might not reflect in the measurement.
 

andreasmaaan

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Wondering how does it compares with new age speakers like D&D 8C and Kii.

8C leverages a cardioid pattern, which might not reflect in the measurement.

This would definitely show up in the measurements, since the Klippel system generates a 360° polar response.

However, my understanding of the Olive preference rating system is that a cardioid speaker's polar response, even if smooth, would be a liability, since the rating system prescribes downward-tilting off-axis responses.
 

mhardy6647

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restorer-john

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There is a microphone protection widget that holds the mic with four micro switches and a PCB. Should the cage around the mic touch the speaker with slightest amount of force, measurements stop. The PCB is about twice the diameter of the microphone. Even though it has an angled deflector on it, it still causes reflections back into the cone of the speaker. Because the measurements are performed in near field, this reflection causes cancellations and peaks that show up at the right frequencies.

There were two fixes. One was to remove the microphone protection which is what you see in this review thread. I am not happy to do this generally as it is risky. So I ran a second experiment where I added tons of padding around the speaker. Those results are very close to not having the protection cage. So likely that is what I will go with.

Klippel have clearly failed here. Significant reflections from their own device have unfortunately sullied and rendered all your previous tests suspect, and it is only the fact that so many measurements have been presented on different speakers, in such a short time, that a clear pattern was observed early on. Imagine some company toiling away trying to produce a perfect speaker and their Klippel rig is giving them erroneous data they can't seem to correct?

A significant re-design of the contact limit switching arrangement for the microphone and/or an increase in distance between the actual mic element and the rig mount itself should be investigated to enable quality measurements at the short distances to speakers you are employing. A extremely small proximity sensor using IR could be a better option?

When you talk about "I added tons of padding around the speaker" what do you mean? Padding to stop the mic hitting the speaker? How can that be acoustically consistent for all sizes and shapes of speakers going forward? What about side ported, side/top firing speakers? Speakers with rear tweeters etc?

Anyway, I'm glad the issue has been identified and investigated earlier rather than later. It was patently obvious there were some issues with the high frequencies in the presented speaker tests.
 
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