Genelec 8341A SAM™ Studio Monitor Review

[Hephaestus]

I get what you're saying, and I fully believe that reviewers are influenced towards saying positive things about speakers or other products by repercussions from manufacturers.

I don't necessarily believe though that you can simply throw out all professional reviews as meaningless. I've found them valuable in guiding me to products I was pleased with, even upon comparison with other products. Sometimes a reviewer will be "politely positive and gently critical," and other times they will be gushingly positive. Does that mean in the latter case they were bribed more money, or could it mean they simply really liked the product? Especially if multiple reviewers say similar things.

Again, I compared the Type 20s and the 8341. Despite rapturous descriptions here of how good the 8341 measures (as well as this guy's review, which had me expecting the 8341s to be amazing:

), I was not that impressed with the sound, especially for the price. Probably if I had not heard the Type 20s and only listened to the 8341s, they would have been the best speaker I'd heard to date. Someone who uses their speakers for professional mixing may find value in different attributes of both speakers than I did.

It seems that you are in the very beginning of your "audiophile journey". Once you educate yourself a bit more here, you may notice that the most neutral speakers will not amaze you on the first listen.

Neutral speakers are safe choice in the long run as they wont give you listening fatigue and work well with any genre of music.

It is worth noting that 8341 are very small speakers and specifically designed for ultra near field / near field monitoring. I would not buy them for regular living room use. 8361 and S360 are dynamically capable for such use.

 

[HooStat]

The answer to that is clearly no, given the the 0.8 standard deviation. Based on the scores, quite a few speakers(some much cheaper) should be a near coinflip with the Genelecs.

I agree. It is more of a question of what is a "meaningful" difference in a preference score. I wouldn't use it to make a decision about speakers. There are a lot of issues in analyzing the kind of data Olive used, and without looking closely at it, I would say that the score is informative, but not predictive. In statistics there is a lot of discussion of "descriptive" versus "predictive" analyses. And these look more descriptive to me. Prediction is a really hard problem. Most of the time describing or explaining the relationship is sufficient to provide understanding.

(Just to clarify why I write this, they appear to be using ordinal values [preference scores from 1-10 with no guarantee that every 1-point difference is exactly the same as any other 1-point difference] and trying to associate them with functions of sound waves with relatively limited sample sizes. It is great that they were able to make anything useful out of that kind of data.)

 

[Senior NEET Engineer]

Here is frequency sweep from my room. Don't know how useful it is for gauging SPL capabilities.

One speaker from 7 feet away in 3000 cubic feet room. I increased volume until 2-5 dB below warning light. 1/6 octave smoothing.

What doesn't make sense to me is that I was just listening at -25 or -20 dB on the processor and the REW SPL meter was already at 87 dB avg 105 dB peak C weighted two speakers. Measurements below were at -17 dB and -5 dB.

What measurement would you recommend instead to test average and peak SPL?

20-20000 distortion

100-3000 distortion

 

[Jon AA]

What measurement would you recommend instead to test average and peak SPL?

I typically like to look at compression sweeps (with EQ applied since it often reduces headroom) to see the capability I have. Keep raising the volume 3 db or 5 db and look for the measurement where you see compression (the line deviates from a perfect copy of the line below it, getting closer to it than the 3 or 5 db volume change). Here's the last one I did:

That's one speaker from 3m (10 ft) away. As you can see, this speaker exhibited no measurable compression even with the volume knob cranked all the way. I need a bigger amp....

I wouldn't guess the Genelec system would let it run into the typical compression one would see with a passive speaker, but would electronically limit it before that. Is that what your purple line shows (shut off below 100 Hz)?

Oh yeah--wear hearing protection like you're going to the gun range.

Edit: One more thing--verify calibration of the REW mic with an SPL meter. Sometimes it's way off due to some setting someplace....

 

[tuga]

I typically like to look at compression sweeps (with EQ applied since it often reduces headroom) to see the capability I have. Keep raising the volume 3 db or 5 db and look for the measurement where you see compression (the line deviates from a perfect copy of the line below it, getting closer to it than the 3 or 5 db volume change. Here's the last one I did:

View attachment 64926

That's from 3m (10 ft) away. As you can see, this speaker exhibited no measurable compression even with the volume knob cranked all the way. I need a bigger amp....

I wouldn't guess the Genelec system would let it run into the typical compression one would see with a passive speaker, but would electronically limit it before that. Is that what your purple line shows (shut off below 100 Hz)?

Oh yeah--wear hearing protection like you're going to the gun range.

That is a possibility, although I think that such a set of measurements as you present would be more informative if you reduced the vertical scale to 30dB as this would make differences more obvious.

Some German magazines plot such sets of FR curves at different SPLs together with the corresponding THD curves but it is sometimes difficult to accomodate both curves in a 50dB high graph if the frequency response is not very flat or strong smoothing is not applied:

Kef LS50 - Stereoplay 8/2012




Alternatively you produce a Deviation from Linearity graph such as the one found on Soundstage's measurements:


Deviation from linearity: Difference @ 90dB from 70dB, 50Hz - 20kHz (measured @ 2m)

https://www.soundstagenetwork.com/i...&catid=77:loudspeaker-measurements&Itemid=153

​

• Deviation from linearity - Measured with a frequency sweep across the audible spectrum on axis at 2 meters.
  
  Purpose: Shows how a speaker is stressed and if it compresses at certain frequencies as the sound-pressure level is increased.
  
  What it tells you: As volume increases, all frequencies should rise at the same rate. However, as a speaker is stressed, compression will occur at certain frequencies. The stress may be mechanical, thermal or otherwise. This test shows those frequencies at which deviation occurs as a result of compression. Many speakers show slight deviations at 90dB. Most speakers start to show serious deviations at 95dB. Very few speakers can be tested at 100dB without damage.

These, in my view, are probably the most informative graphs:

KEF Reference 1 intermodulation distortion 2m - Fig. 11/12 Intermodulation distortion at 85 dBA averaging level at 2 m and 4 m distance under free field conditions. Excitation signal: multisine with the spectral distribution of a medium music signal and 12 dB crest factor.

KEF Reference 1 intermodulation distortion 4m - Fig. 11/12 Intermodulation distortion at 85 dBA averaging level at 2 m and 4 m distance under free field conditions. Excitation signal: multisine with the spectral distribution of a medium music signal and 12 dB crest factor.

Another measurement regarding intermodulation distortion was carried out with an averaging level of 85 dBA at typical listening distances of 2 m and 4 m under free field conditions. The peak level in this measurement was 101 dB, also at a distance of 2 m and 4 m. A multisine with 60 excitation frequencies and a weighting according to EIA-426B for a medium music signal is used as the test signal for this measurement. The signal has a crest factor of 12 dB and thus comes close to a music signal. For the evaluation, all spectral components additionally added by the loudspeaker are evaluated, which contain both harmonic distortions and intermodulation distortions. The two graphics from Fig. 11 show the spectrum of the excitation signal (green curve), the measured spectrum of the signal emitted by the loudspeaker (red) and the distortion components extracted from it (blue). Both are displayed with individual spectral lines and summed up in 1/6 octave bandwidth. The overall distortion component (harmonics and intermodulations THD + IMD) is for the listening level of 85 dBA Leq at 4 m distance at a low –31.3 dB corresponding to 2.7% and for 85 dBA at 2 m distance even only 1%.
https://www.fidelity-online.de/kef-reference-1-messungen/

 

[ctrl]

That's one speaker from 3m (10 ft) away. As you can see, this speaker exhibited no measurable compression even with the volume knob cranked all the way. I need a bigger amp....

Totally pedantic nitpickers normalize the data to the lowest output level to capture even the smallest compression effects

Then you can see small compression effects in your measurement where you do not expect them immediately:

 

[tuga]

The Kef Reference 1 vs the Neumann KH420:

 

[Jon AA]

Totally pedantic nitpickers normalize the data to the lowest output level to capture even the smallest compression effects

Point taken. I didn't quite think Senior NEET Engineer was looking for quite that level of nitpicking at this point though. For the average guy who simply wants to know how loud stuff can play before the speakers and/or amp craps out, that's usually pretty obvious and shows up well on a chart like mine. And with some normalized charts you need to stare at them for 10 minutes to figure out how loud the last clean sweep was instead of it being obvious.

Question on distortion measurements: I do think they're highly useful when doing something like this, but my understanding is that distortion measurements in-room from 3-4 meters away are not going to be accurate--they need to be done in the free field like Tuga's pretty charts. Doing them close up is usually not possible as most peoples' mics will clip before you get to max volume. Any tips?

 

[stevenswall]

I had a pair of Genelec 8260s and 8351s side by side for evaluation.
It took me more than 2 weeks to decide on the 8351s.

Sorry if you answered this before, but what made you choose one over the other? Also, was it the 8351 or 8351b?

 

[Senior NEET Engineer]

I wouldn't guess the Genelec system would let it run into the typical compression one would see with a passive speaker, but would electronically limit it before that. Is that what your purple line shows (shut off below 100 Hz)?

No that is just running the test from 100-3000hz

 

[_Bass]

@amirm thank you! Let me vote for some of the next reviews to be on the more affordable Genelec models - e.g. 8020 or 8030. I think those are more accessible to people who want active speakers.

 

[Sprint]

@amirm: thank you! would be happy if you could review the SAM series (with GLM and without GLM) e.g. 8330, 8340

 

[Senior NEET Engineer]

@amirm thank you! Let me vote for some of the next reviews to be on the more affordable Genelec models - e.g. 8020 or 8030. I think those are more accessible to people who want active speakers.

I'll send the 8030C tomorrow.

I don't think they will be good option though. Their output is much lower than the 8341A which was already struggling from 3 feet away.

 

[_Bass]

I'll send the 8030C tomorrow.

I don't think they will be good option though. Their output is much lower than the 8341A which was already struggling from 3 feet away.

THANK YOU!

Well, the 8030C don't do any DSP so all the power is reserved for the speaker and that could make a difference?
Also, that size of a speaker is safe to assume that it needs to be paired with a sub for true full range sound. In which case the SPL will be higher. Not saying it should be done for the review, rather that it is an assumption that can be made. I truly believe that should be done for any bookshelf, and for home theater with any speaker. Also subjective listening tests if done in stereo may sound louder And lastly, not everyone will listen super loud continuously, at all times. As long as it gets to 75-85 db at 9ft is probably just fine (especially for a 5 inch driver)

 

[Sancus]

THANK YOU!

Well, the 8030C don't do any DSP so all the power is reserved for the speaker and that could make a difference?

Nah, 8030C is a basic 5" two-way, with 50 watts per driver according to spec. That's very similar to the LSR305, which is a 5" with 41W per driver. 8030C might get a little louder, but not significantly. And the LSR305, as you can read from the original review of the 8341A, can't compete.

The 8341a is a 3-way with a 6.7" bass driver, it gets way louder than smaller two-ways. The standard it was being evaluated to is just pretty high, that's all.

 

[Xyrium]

Did this speaker fall off of the speaker review index for some reason, or am I hallucinating....again?

Edit: I think I see the problem. The price slider maxes out at $2500.00 each. Might need an adjustment.

 

[HairyEars]

A few people here scratched their heads over Amir's claim the 8341 wasn't loud enough--and rightfully so. Personally, I damaged my hearing for 10 days due to an high-spl blast from sameself monitors.

There's one plausible explanation for the discrepancy: Amir's monitors were SPL--restricted. (In general, max SPL output can be set with the GLM software . A safety measure of course) .

Either the GLM profile stored in the monitor included that parameter, and it was active during the test, or if not active, a software glitch might have kept it alive.

 

[echopraxia]

A few people here scratched their heads over Amir's claim the 8341 wasn't loud enough--and rightfully so. Personally, I damaged my hearing for 10 days due to an high-spl blast from sameself monitors.

There's one plausible explanation for the discrepancy: Amir's monitors were SPL--restricted. (In general, max SPL output can be set with the GLM software . A safety measure of course) .

Either the GLM profile stored in the monitor included that parameter, and it was active during the test, or if not active, a software glitch might have kept it alive.

I don’t think it’s that strange, if we consider the differences between bass and treble. Listening to 110db of treble power is an entirely different experience than 110db of bass power. You may be surprised to find how much more painful the former is than the latter.

 

[beefkabob]

A few people here scratched their heads over Amir's claim the 8341 wasn't loud enough--and rightfully so. Personally, I damaged my hearing for 10 days due to an high-spl blast from sameself monitors.

There's one plausible explanation for the discrepancy: Amir's monitors were SPL--restricted. (In general, max SPL output can be set with the GLM software . A safety measure of course) .

Either the GLM profile stored in the monitor included that parameter, and it was active during the test, or if not active, a software glitch might have kept it alive.

Peak SPL
≥118 dB

Maximum peak acoustic output per pair in a listening room with music material at 1 m.



Short term max SPL
≥110 dB

Maximum short term sine wave acoustic output on axis in half space, averaged from 100 Hz to 3 kHz at 1 m.



Long term max SPL
≥101 dB

Maximum long term RMS acoustic output in the same conditions with IEC weighted noise (limited by driver protection circuit) at 1 m.

Same sustained as the 705p. I can see these not going loud enough. Hell, at this point, I feel the 708p are marginal. I understand why some would spring for the m2.

 

[HairyEars]

I don’t think it’s that strange, if we consider the differences between bass and treble. Listening to 110db of treble power is an entirely different experience than 110db of bass power. You may be surprised to find how much more painful the former is than the latter.

I agree with the distinction you make, but 99% of music is a blend of many frequencies, which the 8341 can play achingly loud.

I think you should have a firsthand experience with these monitors to realize how mighty their 110db is.