Genelec 8341A SAM™ Studio Monitor Review

[onion]

Cheers - I have demoed the 8341a (without sub). They are practically loud enough on their own, but there were a couple of low freq nulls that GLM could not fully correct. I suspect that problem would remain with the 8351b. I'm not so bothered by extra space taken up by subs, so will probably go for 8341 + 7350 combination.

 

[Da cynics]

Why not just use the 8331+7350?

 

[q3cpma]

Why not just use the 8331+7350?

Power handling (Maximum short term sine wave acoustic output on axis in half space, averaged from 100 Hz to 3 kHz at 1 m goes from 104 to 110 dB), way beefier amplifiers, lower baffle step and too small price difference. Though I'd rather get the 8351B than any of those two.

 

[onion]

Power handling (Maximum short term sine wave acoustic output on axis in half space, averaged from 100 Hz to 3 kHz at 1 m goes from 104 to 110 dB), way beefier amplifiers, lower baffle step and too small price difference. Though I'd rather get the 8351B than any of those two.

I suppose the question I'm asking is if the performance of 8341 + 2 subs exceeds that of 8351b given that both options are similarly priced

 

[q3cpma]

I suppose the question I'm asking is if the performance of 8341 + 2 subs exceeds that of 8351b given that both options are similarly priced

Probably so. The subwoofer recommended on https://www.genelec.com/correct-monitors for a pair of 8341A is the 7370A, though, which means the 7360A if you want a pair. Not sure you can buy 2 7360As for the price difference with its big brother.

 

[onion]

I saw their subwoofer recommendations - but for the room in question, the 7350 should suffice based on room dimensions. I agree that if a 7360/ 7370 pair is required instead, the value proposition changes.

 

[q3cpma]

I saw their subwoofer recommendations - but for the room in question, the 7350 should suffice based on room dimensions. I agree that if a 7360/ 7370 pair is required instead, the value proposition changes.

Well, few people reported the 7350A as chuffing when driven too low and too hard; perhaps they suffered from the problem @echopraxia described in https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...red-for-measurement.13437/page-22#post-489883

 

[ferrellms]

I always follow manufacturer recommendations, (assuming the manufacturer is above board). After all, who knows more about how things will work together. Genelec, depending on professionals, is as above board as they get, of course. GLM, the subwoofer they recommend, and the satellites you can afford assuming they will play loud enough. Period. For goodness sake, the entire package is engineered by the best to work together!

Audio forums offer great advice always, but they also offer bad advice always. Second guessing professional designers, in particular the best, is a great game for audio forums.

 

[Pearljam5000]

After reading 46 pages of this thread I'm still not sure if they're loud enough or not

 

[infinitesymphony]

One could come up with far, far louder setups for $6K/pair. These are about accuracy.

If you can keep your average listening habits under 101 dB SPL RMS @ 1 meter (extrapolating that out to your listening distance by subtracting 6 dB for every distance doubling), these should be loud enough.

 

[samysound]

One could come up with far, far louder setups for $6K/pair. These are about accuracy.

If you can keep your average listening habits under 101 dB SPL RMS @ 1 meter (extrapolating that out to your listening distance by subtracting 6 dB for every distance doubling), these should be loud enough.

Does your estimate factor in a pair of speakers versus single and room gain? Also, high passed with a sub(s) I would think you would be able to get a little more loudness

 

[infinitesymphony]

Does your estimate factor in a pair of speakers versus single and room gain? Also, high passed with a sub(s) I would think you would be able to get a little more loudness

It's just a general estimate made with the inverse square law, likely on the more conservative side as it does not account for room gain or other factors.

 

[EchoChamber]

After reading 46 pages of this thread I'm still not sure if they're loud enough or not

IMO, the 8351B are definitely loud enough at 3 meter. Ear bleeding... I have to keep an eye on the volume - the lack of distortion makes it easy to listen louder than I should. My guess is that I’d probably be happy with the 8341A, I just wanted a little more headroom with the 8351B. Large scale orchestra pieces on these are really something... They handle complex passages really well, better than any previous passive speaker I’ve owned.

 

[hege]

Let's summarize some specs here. Short term/peak is somewhat irrelevant and hard to understand, but I've added them for reference. Woofer is always the limiting factor in this case. Keep in mind that Genelec's long term spec doesn't include <100hz, so you have to imagine the results using laws of physics (driver size, cabinet volume, power).

Long term RMS, Short term, Peak per pair

8341A 101, 110, 118 (woofer total size about 6.5" / 250W)
8351B 103, 113, 118 (woofer total size about 8.5" / 250W)
1032C 104, 114, 124 (woofer size 10" / 250W)
8361A 109, 118, 128 (woofer total size about 10" / 700W)
1237A 112, 118, 122 (woofer size 12" / 500W)

Some common factors (same as I have, and probably many others):

Two speakers +3dB
Near wall +3dB
2 meters distance -6dB (3m would be -9.5dB)

(so they simply cancel out to 0dB here)

Actual measurements I did with 1032C in my very damped basement:

- Long term with very 30-40hz bass heavy tracks: 104dBZ (90dBA)
- With 85hz highpass: 105dBZ (105dBA)

That is when yellow blinking starts and volume is automatically lowered. Note the A-weighting result that ignores bass (tracks with +10dB hot bass are common). Results match well the long term spec..

8341A is "only" 3dB behind in spec, but keep in mind we are talking about 6.5" vs 10" woofer, it's no surprise if the limiter hits much earlier. I'm not even calculating cabinet size here, but I can say that I've never heard satisfying bass from a 6.5" speaker (splitting it into two racetrack woofers probably doesn't help either..). It would be ok in very nearfield use.

I added 1237A in the table, because that's what I upgraded to from my 1032C's. I like to sometimes enjoy some bassy music, and I don't want to be near any limits, which might result in unnecessary distortion. In this case it's also jump from 2-way to 3-way. Even at my normal moderate 75-80dBA listening, I can only offer the old cliché: bigger sounds bigger.

edit: Even though I have my BMS subs, I felt that I didn't get coherent sounding results no matter how much I tried to measure and integrate them into my 1032Cs. With 1237A it's much easier, they play effortlessly down to 30hz, after which they have a steep internal highpass. I simply add my BMS with ~27hz@48dB/oct lowpass with excellent results. Most of the time they are quiet.

 

[soundwave76]

Why not just use the 8331+7350?

Indeed. I have this setup and it sounds great and VERY LOUD if needed.

 

[onion]

I think loudness is one thing when it comes to distance from speakers or speakers + sub; but I am as interested in maintaining the stellar stereo imaging which does degrade beyond a certain distance. Any thoughts as to any difference between the 8341 and 8351 on this marker of quality?

 

[q3cpma]

8351B 103, 113, 118 (woofer total size about 8" / 250W)

Personally, I measure sqrt(218 * 101 * 2 / pi) * 2 / 25.4 ~= 9.3" for the 8351B. Could be rounded to 9", I guess.

 

[hege]

Personally, I measure sqrt(218 * 101 * 2 / pi) * 2 / 25.4 ~= 9.3" for the 8351B. Could be rounded to 9", I guess.

Could be, just used some popular sizes.. I'll give in some and edit it to 8.5" It's still just an approximation of two small woofers..

 

[andreasmaaan]

Here's how the 8351 performs (measured by Sound&Recording). The blue line is the RMS SPL at which the speaker produces 10% THD, and the red line is the RMS SPL at which it produces 3% THD.

You can infer from its smaller woofer radiating area that the 8341 will be somewhat more limited in the bass. It should be more or less identical above 500Hz.

 

[q3cpma]

Here's how the 8351 performs (measured by Sound&Recording). The blue line is the RMS SPL at which the speaker produces 10% THD, and the red line is the RMS SPL at which it produces 3% THD.

You can infer from its smaller woofer radiating area that the 8341 will be somewhat more limited in the bass. It should be more or less identical above 500Hz.

View attachment 87880

Sadly, we can't extrapolate using the 1st generation Ones for the 2nd (8341A and 8331A) and 3rd (8351B and 8361A). SAR also did the 8331A, fortunately:

If we try to find a comparison point, the 8331A reaches ~95 dB at 3% THD at 100 Hz while the 8351A does ~98, which does point to greatly improved woofers to me; at least when you consider that the 8331A has 5.8" of woofer area while the 8351A has 9.2".
It can even play louder at 50 Hz!

By the way, here's a little sh script to get SAR's measurements from a review URL:

curl -s "$1" | sed -En '/class="image-container"/{s#.*url\(([^)]+)\).*#\1#; s#-[0-9]+x[0-9]+(\.(jpe?g|png))$#\1#; p}' | \
    tr '\n' '\0' | xargs -0 curl --remote-name-all --location --user-agent 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:37.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/37.0'