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Genelec 8351B vs Mesanovic RTM10 - AB Test Preparation

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Jason K

Jason K

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Thank you Jason, a really interesting summation., how do the 1.4s compare!
Keith

Setting 1.4 is particularly difficult.
Down firing woofer, the room mode on the top and bottom axis makes the ceiling tremble very much.
Trying to find a good location and listen properly.

But in short, it feels like the other speakers are listening to reproduced sound, but 1.4 feels like watching live!
 

iec 60318-4

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It took a long time to upload due to personal busy work.

I invited my audiophile friends, sound engineers, and musicians to listen together.

After listening to several songs alternately, what everyone heard agrees on is that the RTM10 outperforms the 8351B when it comes to bass!

Many are amazed by the deep bass that emanates from the RTM10 alone.

Personally, through several experiences (kii 3, d&d 8c, buchardt a500), the bass of an active speaker tuned to a closed type dsp had a distrustful preconceived notion.

This is because it was difficult to feel a really clean deep bass sound due to the high distortion rate when a small box or small unit was put in and the bass output was raised with dsp.

However, the bass of the RTM10 is very clean and does not cause noise even at high output.

This actually felt deeper in the sub bass when compared to the 8351B.
(I think this is due to the relatively low high-order distortion, apart from the 20~30Hz reproducibility.)

In addition, one of the advantages of the sealed type was the fast group delay, which allowed us to hear a tighter bass.


There was a very clear tonal difference in the midrange and treble.

The 8351B had a sharp, very clean impression and a lot of air.

I've been listening to the 8351B for a long time, so when I first listened to the RTM10 I felt that the air was relatively little. (I'm not saying it's dull, it's keeping sharp enough)

However, after listening to the RTM10 for a long period of time, the high frequency without fatigue became a big advantage.

The 8351B's treble was amazing to feel the stimulus while feeling a sharp attack for a short time, but I felt relatively tired from listening for a long time, especially! When I enjoy my spare time after a day of physical exhaustion after work, the tonal features of the RTM10 were especially attractive.

Musicians and audiophile friends prefered RTM10 more in this respect,
While my friends of engineers who do sound production prefered the 8351B.


Also, the interesting thing was in the phantom image.

This is a subjective experience, but in most cases, the phantom center is blurred or obscured when the speaker is placed wider than 60 degrees.

However, when I moved the RTM10 to the outside of the 8351B and listened to it, I could feel that a very accurate phantom center image was maintained without such blurring.
I think this may be due to the wide horizontal radiation width of the RTM10.

The treble's tone from the mid-range is slightly warmer than the 8351B, but it does not miss the detailed transient response to vocals and instruments.

Compared to the 8351B, male vocals such as Sam Smith and female vocals such as Suzanne Vega were able to feel a warm and stable tone without harsh feeling at air band.

the RTM10's midrange gives a rich impression while maintaining neutrality.
When listening to a classical piano, I was particularly fascinated by the rich tone.

I was able to handle songs that had to have excellent reproducibility, such as Zedd's Addicted to a Memory, and played great with songs that needed a very strong sub-response, such as Limit to your love.

The 8351B is undoubtedly a reference speaker, but if you want a more musical and rich tone than an analytic feel, I felt the RTM10 would also be a powerfully considered speaker as an all in one full-range speaker.

View attachment 119094
IMG_0834 - 복사본.jpeg


In February, I had a chance to listen to those speakers with the cheerful permission of @Jason K.
I knew what a great speaker 8351b was, and I listened to a variety of songs looking forward to how much RTM10 would be better than The Ones.

As shown in the text, the biggest advantage was the ability to play deep bass without audible distortion. In songs like James Blake - Limit to Your Love and J Cole - MIDDLE CHILD, RTM10 played deeper and more accurately, and it made my heart beat. Even though it's bookshelf, I think it's a unique advantage of RTM10 to be able to play sub bass so loud that distortion is not a problem without subwoofer.

Now, to move on to another topic besides the excellence of bass, unlike that picture, 51b was placed on top of RTM10 when I listened to it. So the 51b sound imaging was held high up, and it felt difficult to compare the stagings and the sound expressions. But if I compare it, RTM10 seemed to have a clearer mono voice in the middle, but the memory disappeared and it was hard to compare each other, so I didn't think much about listening to it.

The most interesting thing is that when I listened to my favorite jazz tracks, RTM10 sounded very natural and sweet, but 51b seemed rigid and rather unnatural. In addition to jazz, I changed it to my favorite pop and rock songs. On the contrary, 51b was natural but RTM10 was colored in hard times. Sometimes the sound was confusing between the two of course. In this case, both were very good! (Circle of Confusion attacked me?)

Lastly, before I left Jason's house, I heard Hans zimmer's Mountain (Interstellar) at RTM10 and I thought the house was going to collapse! When I frowned, Jason reduced the volume a little, but even when my chest, legs, hands, and feet were shaking, I couldn't hear any noise or distortion. I think it's an unforgettable moment in my audio experience :)
 
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preload

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Sounds like genelec has some competition. Did you run the GLM room for this test?
 

Pearljam5000

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In February, I had a chance to listen to those speakers with the cheerful permission of @Jason K.
I knew what a great speaker 8351b was, and I listened to a variety of songs looking forward to how much RTM10 would be better than The Ones.

As shown in the text, the biggest advantage was the ability to play deep bass without audible distortion. In songs like James Blake - Limit to Your Love and J Cole - MIDDLE CHILD, RTM10 played deeper and more accurately, and it made my heart beat. Even though it's bookshelf, I think it's a unique advantage of RTM10 to be able to play sub bass so loud that distortion is not a problem without subwoofer.

Now, to move on to another topic besides the excellence of bass, unlike that picture, 51b was placed on top of RTM10 when I listened to it. So the 51b sound imaging was held high up, and it felt difficult to compare the stagings and the sound expressions. But if I compare it, RTM10 seemed to have a clearer mono voice in the middle, but the memory disappeared and it was hard to compare each other, so I didn't think much about listening to it.

The most interesting thing is that when I listened to my favorite jazz tracks, RTM10 sounded very natural and sweet, but 51b seemed rigid and rather unnatural. In addition to jazz, I changed it to my favorite pop and rock songs. On the contrary, 51b was natural but RTM10 was colored in hard times. Sometimes the sound was confusing between the two of course. In this case, both were very good! (Circle of Confusion attacked me?)

Lastly, before I left Jason's house, I heard Hans zimmer's Mountain (Interstellar) at RTM10 and I thought the house was going to collapse! When I frowned, Jason reduced the volume a little, but even when my chest, legs, hands, and feet were shaking, I couldn't hear any noise or distortion. I think it's an unforgettable moment in my audio experience :)
It's somewhat obvious the RTM10 will have more bass as it's 10 inch vs 8351B which is 8 inch, the 8361A would be more comparable.
 

YSC

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really interesting impression! I didn't thought it would be that obvious sens the bass of the RTM-10 being more extended and effortless, from FR they looks like should sound more similar, do you think it's that extra deep bass with less distortion kind of mask out the highs "fatigue" feel?
 
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Jason K

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It's somewhat obvious the RTM10 will have more bass as it's 10 inch vs 8351B which is 8 inch, the 8361A would be more comparable.

8351B’s woofers are oval shape. Two 8” woofers are almost same as 10” size.
 
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Jason K

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really interesting impression! I didn't thought it would be that obvious sens the bass of the RTM-10 being more extended and effortless, from FR they looks like should sound more similar, do you think it's that extra deep bass with less distortion kind of mask out the highs "fatigue" feel?

There was a difference even in songs with no bass in the high frequency fatigue. I think this is a characteristic of the true ribbon tweeter.
 
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thewas

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YSC

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There was a difference even in songs with no bass in the high frequency fatigue. I think this is a characteristic of the true ribbon tweeter.
Looking at both plots it seems the 8351b having some 2-5db hotter high frequency?

maybe it's really the true ribbon tweeter property, I wonders what will show up in measurement for fatiguing vs non-fatiguing highs would show up. @amirm any insight on this? IMD? THD?
 

TimH

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This thread has been great! I'm hoping to do a similar test with 8341s or 8351bs if I can find any, the RTM10s and GGNTKT M1s (the later two thanks to Purité Audio ) vs my Meridian DSP5000s at the end of lockdown. I'll make sure I make a thread to let you know the outcome - I'm not very technical so it'll be more subjective than many people would like but hopefully will offer an insight into how they compare. Keith is going to bring some kit to help set them up properly so it might be possible to gather some more objective data.
 

Purité Audio

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Objective data would be nice but I will settle for sound emitting from all three speakers.
Keith
 

oivavoi

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This thread has been great! I'm hoping to do a similar test with 8341s or 8351bs if I can find any, the RTM10s and GGNTKT M1s (the later two thanks to Purité Audio ) vs my Meridian DSP5000s at the end of lockdown. I'll make sure I make a thread to let you know the outcome - I'm not very technical so it'll be more subjective than many people would like but hopefully will offer an insight into how they compare. Keith is going to bring some kit to help set them up properly so it might be possible to gather some more objective data.

Great, good luck! I agree with Keith. Sure, the best thing is impeccable level matching and double blind listening setups. When that's difficult to achieve, I still think it's very interesting with reasonably level-matched and sighted side-by-side listening. Even such basic sighted listening has given me some surprising experiences, where loudspeakers I thought sounded very different from each other turned out to be quite similar.
 

richard12511

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This thread has been great! I'm hoping to do a similar test with 8341s or 8351bs if I can find any, the RTM10s and GGNTKT M1s (the later two thanks to Purité Audio ) vs my Meridian DSP5000s at the end of lockdown. I'll make sure I make a thread to let you know the outcome - I'm not very technical so it'll be more subjective than many people would like but hopefully will offer an insight into how they compare. Keith is going to bring some kit to help set them up properly so it might be possible to gather some more objective data.

That would be awesome!
 
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Jason K

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Thank you, are those after and before of both, how were they measured (single or average) and what correction strategy and target was used as all those have a strong influence on the final listening result? By the way var or 1/12-1/6 smoothing is better to show the differences.

The graph is LR Vector averaged, 1/24 smoothing.
My strategy is correct the FR curve until 200Hz,
And the target curve is (as i remember) 0.7db / oct slope. It’s result that I can get after tried many times to find natural balance in that room.
 
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Jason K

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Looking at both plots it seems the 8351b having some 2-5db hotter high frequency?

maybe it's really the true ribbon tweeter property, I wonders what will show up in measurement for fatiguing vs non-fatiguing highs would show up. @amirm any insight on this? IMD? THD?

4557E8B7-D73D-4776-B46A-9DB33F05209F.jpeg
When measured at the time, there was not much sound absorption.
Now that the placement has changed slightly, since about eight sound-absorbing panels are placed on the side and rear, the energy in the off-axis is reduced, and the on-axis response of the RTM10 is more dominated, resulting in a similar high-frequency curve.

PS. It’s corrected graph untill midrange.
 
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