Thank you for the review Amirm.
Great to finally see those detailed measurements of the 8351B's
Since I own five of them in a 5.2 surround setup, partnered with a Trinnov Altitude-32, I will address some questions I've seen circulating.
Before I dive into that, some general comments, I think it is not entirely fair to compare the 8351B's with the Revel salon-2's there both are designed for different scenario's (and at the same time have similarities in scientific approach).
Directivity
The 8351B's are designed with a narrow but controlled directivity in mind, which fits the objective in a control room on a mixing desk. This enables the engineer to focus on every detail in the mix and allows for educated mix decisions.
The debate between wide dispersion or narrow dispersion will never end, and I believe there isn't better or worse but a matter of preference and application.
Most important is that the directivity is controlled, whether it is wide or narrow. For that reason, those designs focussed on controlled directivity (Revel, KEF, Kii, D&D, Genelec) are considered next-level designs and should yield excellent results in the proper setup.
My take and preferences: I don't wish to hear the reflections of my room to create this live feeling. Simple because my room's reverb and decay times will always be the same with every recording. This implies that the same sauce will be applied to all content. I don't wish to replicate a live performance in my living room. I want to re-produce the control-room experience of the mix engineer at home. I prefer to hear the captured ambiance and reverb times of the original record. to me that gives me the illusion of being present at the event.
8351B subjective sound
Personally, I like the controlled narrow directivity of the Genelecs. Amirm is right; the Genelecs will not give you this live-like presentation as some other designs (this perception changes dramatically when you add the chest-feeling impact of a quality subwoofer system).
What the Genelecs do is much more appealing to me. They present a "window" inside the recording. Inside this window, every single sound has its razor-focused location in 3D space. The Genelec's always pursuit me to close my eyes, and in no time, I am transferred into the mix bubble. It is a fantastic experience every time again.
The Genelecs are not made for casual listening. They draw too much attention to details for casual listening. They are too focused in presentation for live-sound illusion as well, live sound has more diffusion to it. To me, these are all positives and the reason why I choose them.
The best way to describe it is like you have bright halogen light beams in a dark space pointing upwards. Inside this light ray, you see a beam of environmental dust particles.
When shifting from two-channel to 5.2 surround, they offer a holographic bubble of the movie scene. You don't hear sound coming from speakers. You are in it!
I believe the Trinnov excellent way of processing and room optimizing in the time-domain combined with the controlled directivity has everything to do with this. Pans from left to right or front to back are seamless. The perception of height and depth is surreal.
Sub-woofers
Stand-alone, the 8351B sound remarkably precise and holographic and are therefore, a perfect mixing tool in the studio. The low-end is accurate and goes relatively deep for a box this size. However, it is undoubately a compact system and more made for precision than for big impact.
In my humble opinion, they
must be combined with a solid subwoofer system with optimized crossover settings and time alignment to transform them to a whole new level. When you do this correctly, they become an extensive sounding system. The result is a system that breaths and is tremendously dynamically effortless. Betters all passive big floorstanders I've ever owned.
In my current setup, the 8351B's are combined with two SVS PC13 Ultra cylinder subwoofers. The crossover is at 85Hz with an 8th order L/R crossover. 85Hz is chosen for optimal response tailored to my room. I can imagine that when combined with the W371A's, a similar or better experience happens, with the benefits of extended directivity control and active room modal compensation (depending on the mode you choose)
Trinnov
The benefits of the 8351Bs controlled directivity have shown their merits partnered with the Trinnov altitude-32. This is the only speaker where I could let the Trinnov correct aggressively and precisely (as opposed to the much milder correction settings by default) without negative (hearable) artifacts.
In Trinnov's "Advanced Settings" tab:
- Resolution of Energy Response: 1/24 octave for IIR & FIR (1/3 octave by default)
- Typically, this high resolution of correction provides a perceived "too processed" sound, and it didn't sound good on my previous Magnepans MG20.7's. However, on the 8351B's, it sounds seamless and natural. With these settings, they sound even smoother and more spacious (bigger and increased depth).
- Number of IIR filters: 50 (default 20)
- This increases the amount of IIR filters for the bass correction. Bass gets more precise, clean, and tactile with this setting. Almost like quality headphones precision.
- IIR filters maximum Frequency: 200Hz (default 150Hz)
- FIR filter length: 300ms (default 100ms)
I don't recommend using multiple correction systems in tandem. Let the Trinnov be the center of all controls and correct and integrate all speakers, including the subs.
There have been some talks about the phase linearity of the 8351B's. It is debatable if we are sensitive to this, but for what's worth it, the Trinnov does linearize the phase response of the 8351B's above 200Hz. (see screenshot). Which could be regarded as a benefit using the Trinnov room optimizer, at the cost of increased latency. This shouldn't be a problem for home use, where most Blu-ray players can compensate for this delay. For studio usage that is another story, and this kind of delays are undesirable in this application.
I believe I don't have the latest firmware update on the 8351Bs. In the next round of re-measuring and correcting my room with the Trinnov, I will update the firmware (if there is indeed one) and report back if there is any change in the measured phase-response.
With multi subs, if you have spare channels on your Trinnov, I recommend configure them as a summed mono system. Correct each sub's delay times individually (the trinnov can accurately measure this) and then let the optimizer linearize the combined summed response. There are some tricks in the Trinnov to do this. I can help offline with this; please send me a PM for that (to keep this topic relevant to the Genelecs)
If you have the budget and the choice, go with the Altitude-32 instead of the Altitude-16, for the sole reason that the Altitude-32 can feed the Genelecs digital directly with AES/EBU.
Feeding the 8351B digitally directly improves the level of resolution, cleanness, and imaging.
The transition from analog to digital feed was not subtle, and I got treated with a level of resolution I've never experienced before.
That is not to say the analog inputs of the Genelecs aren't transparent. There is more to it. It isn't only the ADC and pre-amp stage of the 8351B's inputs you omit but also the source's DAC and analog output. Basically, you bypass the whole chain of DAC > analog output stage > pre-amp analog input > ADC.
ISS Sleep mode
Even if you don't use the Genelecs room correction system, the GLM kit is a must to have. Not only do you need it for the firmware updates, but this is the only way to adjust and optimize the ISS sleep mode. In some cases, adjustments are required to make it work well.
Multiple users reported that ISS doesn't work well with AES signals. That depends on how you look at it. In AES input mode, It doesn't work in the sense that ISS doesn't get triggered by silence in the audio content. They go to sleep when the AES signal is removed (when you switch off your source). I actually prefer this way, to avoid the risk of the surround channels goes to sleep in prolonging silent scenes in movies.
In my scenario, this is perfect. When the Trinnov switch on, the Genelecs turn on by receiving the AES data stream. When the Trinnov goes off, the Genelec's go to sleep after 2 minutes (programmed by the GLM kit). All just with one button.
Without GLM by default, the 8351B switches automatically between AES or Analog inputs, and therefore ISS is triggered by both inputs. Initially, this caused some issues in my setup, that some of the five channels got triggered by something picked up by the analog inputs and, as a result, didn't go into sleep mode.
This was solved by doing the following in the GLM software:
- Select the AES/EBU input as ONLY input (disables the analog inputs)
- Set the timer on 2 minutes to go into sleep mode
- Additionally, one can change the sensitivity, but that doesn't make any difference in the AES/EBU mode.
Conclusion:
I can highly recommend the 8351B's for home usage under the condition that they are matched with a quality subwoofer system and solid alignment of crossover and time. That implies that if you go outside the GLM ecosystem with non-Genelec subwoofers, you have to use something like DIRAC, mini DSP, or a Trinnov to implement this successfully.
They aren't for everyone, but they are for those who crave absolute accuracy, precision, and focus. They would be the perfect tool to analyze and unravel music and recordings.
The 8351Bs are marvels of engineering and represent the new era of loudspeaker design, where excellent acoustic design is paired with DSP to overcome frequency, directivity, and time-domain non-linearities. This is in a compact and in my opinion beautiful looking package. They partner very well with a Trinnov, and fed digital is a match made in heaven.