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Genelec 8361A Review (Powered Monitor)

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    Votes: 6 0.9%
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richard12511

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People have suggested waldo should try to EQ a typical "BBC dipp" but will this work due to the genelecs disperson ?
I don't think so. I actually tried this for a bit, but switching back after having it on for awhile made it obvious to me I preferred the more neutral presentation of the default response.

Just like you can't EQ a speaker with inconsistent directivity(some BBC designs) to sound like a speaker with smooth directivity, you can't EQ a speaker with good directivity(like this speaker) to sound like a speaker with inconsistent directivity.
 

richard12511

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Thank you for all of your responses. I learned a lot about the speaker and about ASR. The speakers are still too bright for me after messing around quite a bit with glm. I just can’t get rid of what I take be bright treble and artificial or synthetic sound on strings and pianos. Given how many people love the speakers, I just chalk it up to different priorities. I understand that ASR doesn’t really believe in different priorities though. Anyway, thanks again for humoring me.
No worries mate. Contrarian opinions are always welcome. There will always be differences in individual preference, and no one can deny you your personal opinion. I think where you went astray(and starting drawing negative feedback) is when you started trying to equate your individual subjective preference to mean that these speakers were objectively not good for classical music, despite the research that suggests they're great for it. The difference in the way it's said: "I don't like the way these sound for classical music" vs "Y'all don't know classical music like I do, these speakers are bad for classical".

That said, @echopraxia brought up the dispersion width idea as a potential "objective" reason that could explain your impressions. If you're stuck with just 2 speakers, then depending on the type of classical, and the way it's recorded(close mic vs far mic), it may be advantageous to go for a wider dispersion speaker. When listening to a symphony live at a average hall, the ratio of direct to indirect(reflected) sound is skewed heavily in favor of the indirect sound. Most of what you're hearing is reflected sound, especially if you're towards the back. Really the only way to "attempt" to reproduce this at home with a close miked recording is with multichannel. However, with just 2 channels, a much wider dispersion speaker is probably going to give you a direct/indirect ratio that's closer(though still far away) to the live experience. The 8361 isn't super narrow, but at 100 degrees, it's not super wide either. I'm looking forward to seeing the Revel Salon2 measured, and I'm guessing it will be ~140-150 degrees. There are even wider dispersion monopole speakers out there, like the Philharmonic BMR/Tower(180 degrees). I could actually see a good argument in favor of a nice omni speaker if one's goal is to try and recreate the sound of a live symphony hall with a simple stereo setup.

BTW, I also find that these speakers are too bright after running GLM. The problem is that GLM just reduces all the peaks in the bass down to (near) 0dB, but doesn't add any bass boost. The result is a tighter bass, but now the overall balance is considerably brighter than it should be. Are you using GLM 4.1? 4.1 by default adds 2 shelf filters to fix this, one for the bass(below 200Hz), and the other an overall tilt from low to high(200Hz+?). Personally, I add +3dB for the bass and a -1.5dB(at 20kHz), and I think it sounds much more natural than the default curve. Amir looks to have done something similar in his listening test. Maybe something to try before you have to send them back?
 

dshreter

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It’s fair to say that the goals of studio monitors and home listening speakers can be different. It’s been shared that wider directivity speakers may suit some listeners better, and that’s at odds with how monitors are designed.

Genelec points out specifically which speakers are required at any listening distance to ensure that direct sound is dominant.

This is right for monitoring, but direct sound does not need to dominate as a rule when listening for enjoyment. Neither is the converse a rule either - it’s up to preference and interpretation.

 

thewas

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BTW, I also find that these speakers are too bright after running GLM. The problem is that GLM just reduces all the peaks in the bass down to (near) 0dB, but doesn't add any bass boost. The result is a tighter bass, but now the overall balance is considerably brighter than it should be.
True, since in the region below 200 Hz there are usually quite some significant dips (also SBIR ones), equalising the peaks to flat makes the average we hear rather lower than the correction target, I recommend always the psychoacoustic smoothing in REW to check for that (not to create the filters but possibly change their level).
 

Sancus

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It’s been shared that wider directivity speakers may suit some listeners better, and that’s at odds with how monitors are designed.

There's another facet to this as well, which is that wide directivity is only beneficial for stereo. One of Genelec's marketing points is that the Ones are excellent for multi-channel immersive audio setups, which are important for the TV/Film industry and even for music with the push to remix for Atmos etc.
 

807Recordings

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So the big question here I wonder is what are Waldo's in room measurements?
This seems to be the starting point of anything science related and could perhaps remove some shadows of confusion.
Preference is of course to each his own but when one says well damped room with out some sort of validation it can mean anything.
As we know a room is more likely to change a frequency response than any speaker design.

I am not disregarding his observations but I would be more curious to what the actual factors are here and not 20 pages of fighting against science and CBOK.
 

Laserjock

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So the big question here I wonder is what are Waldo's in room measurements?
This seems to be the starting point of anything science related and could perhaps remove some shadows of confusion.
Preference is of course to each his own but when one says well damped room with out some sort of validation it can mean anything.
As we know a room is more likely to change a frequency response than any speaker design.

I am not disregarding his observations but I would be more curious to what the actual factors are here and not 20 pages of fighting against science and CBOK.
I wondered this as well as what he/she is used to in that room.
There are a lot of variables
 

Pearljam5000

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I don't think the room matters at all
The BBC speakers sound is like the extreme opposite of the Genelec analytical and some might say bright (I prefer calling it detailed and neutral ) sound.
I'm guessing he'll like the ATCs a lot
 

807Recordings

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I don't think the room matters at all
The BBC speakers sound is like the extreme opposite of the Genelec analytical and some might say bright (I prefer calling it detailed and neutral ) sound.
I'm guessing he'll like the ATCs a lot
Room matters the most in most situations on how we hear speakers.
Room deviations from neutral are often in the 20-30dB +/- range, where a terrible speaker is usually under 6dB +/-
So ya rooms can matter, and we have not even taken into account the room modes like ringing.
 

waldo2

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Room about 20x25. 9 ft ceilings. Speakers pulled it into room off of walls. Rugs, bookcases full of books, windows have drapes, stuffed furniture. No acoustical treatment, but there are a couple of tapestries on walls. It has been an excellent room for music making and listening.

I found the speakers very impressive for electronic music. The clarity, and depth of bass excellent. Bill Frisell never sounded better in my room. The price of the speakers is very fair for this kind of music, which I also like very much. The speakers just didn’t, in my experience, fare well on acoustic instruments, especially violin and piano. I know most of you think it is wrong to talk about speakers in terms of music instead of frequency response, but that is my experience. I also agree that many of my problems with the speaker are related to dispersion, but I also found the speaker bright and could not fix it with glm or judicious eq. Still, I stress that for electronic, pop, rock, etc, the speakers are likely amazing and quite a good value. i would guess the bass response cannot be beat at anywhere near this price. Also, I rarely listen to music loud, so the spl capabilities lost on me. I’m not saying these aren’t great speakers in many contexts.
 

807Recordings

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Room about 20x25. 9 ft ceilings. Speakers pulled it into room off of walls. Rugs, bookcases full of books, windows have drapes, stuffed furniture. No acoustical treatment, but there are a couple of tapestries on walls. It has been an excellent room for music making and listening.

I found the speakers very impressive for electronic music. The clarity, and depth of bass excellent. Bill Frisell never sounded better in my room. The price of the speakers is very fair for this kind of music, which I also like very much. The speakers just didn’t, in my experience, fare well on acoustic instruments, especially violin and piano. I know most of you think it is wrong to talk about speakers in terms of music instead of frequency response, but that is my experience. I also agree that many of my problems with the speaker are related to dispersion, but I also found the speaker bright and could not fix it with glm or judicious eq. Still, I stress that for electronic, pop, rock, etc, the speakers are likely amazing and quite a good value. i would guess the bass response cannot be beat at anywhere near this price. Also, I rarely listen to music loud, so the spl capabilities lost on me. I’m not saying these aren’t great speakers in many contexts.
I mean no disrespect here when I say this but this is highly subjective in terms of how a room sounds and have been through this argument many times with the so called studios not correctly done that produced questionable recordings.

This applies to Jazz, Classical, Electronic, etc and partly why I decided not to do studio work full time and instead work in IT Security and Compliancies. :)
 

Pearljam5000

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Room matters the most in most situations on how we hear speakers.
Room deviations from neutral are often in the 20-30dB +/- range, where a terrible speaker is usually under 6dB +/-
So ya rooms can matter, and we have not even taken into account the room modes like ringing.
What I meant was that even if the room was perfect, the overall sound is not for him
 

807Recordings

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What I meant was that even if the room is perfect, the overall sound is not for him
That I can agree with and I tried to make as a point in my first comment to this thread. Preference is just that but is it the speaker that is skewing the preference or the room? I know I have been guilty of this in the past, many times and only after getting a more accurate room did I realize how wrong I was. Not just on speakers, equipment, but also music.
 

Trell

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Room about 20x25. 9 ft ceilings. Speakers pulled it into room off of walls. Rugs, bookcases full of books, windows have drapes, stuffed furniture. No acoustical treatment, but there are a couple of tapestries on walls. It has been an excellent room for music making and listening.

I found the speakers very impressive for electronic music. The clarity, and depth of bass excellent. Bill Frisell never sounded better in my room. The price of the speakers is very fair for this kind of music, which I also like very much. The speakers just didn’t, in my experience, fare well on acoustic instruments, especially violin and piano. I know most of you think it is wrong to talk about speakers in terms of music instead of frequency response, but that is my experience. I also agree that many of my problems with the speaker are related to dispersion, but I also found the speaker bright and could not fix it with glm or judicious eq. Still, I stress that for electronic, pop, rock, etc, the speakers are likely amazing and quite a good value. i would guess the bass response cannot be beat at anywhere near this price. Also, I rarely listen to music loud, so the spl capabilities lost on me. I’m not saying these aren’t great speakers in many contexts.

GLM AutoCal shows the measurement and applied correction for each speaker so you could posts those graphs.
 

waldo2

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I don't think the room matters at all
The BBC speakers sound is like the extreme opposite of the Genelec analytical and some might say bright (I prefer calling it detailed and neutral ) sound.
I'm guessing he'll like the ATCs a lot
Re ATC, they simply weigh too much for me to deal with when you get to models that have decent bass. For example, scm 100 weighs 143 lbs. I couldn’t lift that to move even with my wife helping and rolling her eyes. The genelecs, though a bit heavy (70lbs) are manageable, even if difficult to move. Also, even the scm100 bass not as low as genelec from specs. Genelec manages to get excellent bass, at reasonable weight and price. Still, no doubt Atc has other virtues, but they are, for me, weight prohibitive.
 

dfuller

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Re ATC, they simply weigh too much for me to deal with when you get to models that have decent bass. For example, scm 100 weighs 143 lbs. I couldn’t lift that to move even with my wife helping and rolling her eyes. The genelecs, though a bit heavy (70lbs) are manageable, even if difficult to move. Also, even the scm100 bass not as low as genelec from specs. Genelec manages to get excellent bass, at reasonable weight and price. Still, no doubt Atc has other virtues, but they are, for me, weight prohibitive.
They are ludicrously heavy, yes - though you could consider adding a sub for smaller models (SAF notwithstanding).
 

YSC

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Re ATC, they simply weigh too much for me to deal with when you get to models that have decent bass. For example, scm 100 weighs 143 lbs. I couldn’t lift that to move even with my wife helping and rolling her eyes. The genelecs, though a bit heavy (70lbs) are manageable, even if difficult to move. Also, even the scm100 bass not as low as genelec from specs. Genelec manages to get excellent bass, at reasonable weight and price. Still, no doubt Atc has other virtues, but they are, for me, weight prohibitive.
actually do you still have the GLM graphs in your computer somewhere? no insult or trying to say "this is why you feels it not doing right", just kind of geek curiosity to try and see what FR could it be when someone with the exp tells it's not right in some music
 

preload

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actually do you still have the GLM graphs in your computer somewhere? no insult or trying to say "this is why you feels it not doing right", just kind of geek curiosity to try and see what FR could it be when someone with the exp tells it's not right in some music
Yes, I'm also curious what type of FR can turn a Steinway into a harpsichord.
 

Floyd Toole

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Toole's findings are generally about mass market gear in normal reflective rooms. And so on. Situations beyond the ordinary haven't received much attention. Are we ordinary listeners, or more than that?
What people often don't know - because they haven't read the papers or my books - is that at the very outset of my research the key set of experiments were done in collaboration with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a massive nationwide organization that was seeking to upgrade their monitors, large, medium and small for different circumstances. The goal was to find similar sounding, and timbrally neutral, loudspeakers for their needs. The listeners were a mixture of their professional recording engineers from across the nation and local audiophiles that I had sought out. I had earlier given up on professional musicians as critical listeners of sound quality - most of them pay more attention to the music, seeking "valid interpretations". Others have found the same thing. There were no "people off the street".
Toole, F. E. (1985). “Subjective measurements of loudspeaker sound quality and listener preferences”, J. Audio Eng. Soc., 33. pp. 2-31.
Toole, F. E. (1986). “Loudspeaker measurements and their relationship to listener preferences”, J. Audio Eng. Soc., 34, pt.1, pp. 227-235, pt. 2, pp. 323-348.
There were two important findings: pro engineers and audiophiles liked and disliked the same loudspeakers in double-blind, equal loudness comparison tests. Except for a sub-group of the engineers who had trouble delivering consistent ratings of loudspeakers when they heard them repeatedly in the randomized presentations. It turns out that these individuals had suffered significant hearing loss, which is an occupational hazard in pro audio. They were not hearing all of the sounds, good or bad, and therefore could not be as reliably analytical. Yet, they were creating recordings! How many like them are out there in the music and movie industries? A lot.
All of this was described in JAES publications in 1985-86, and is in my books.
The next phase was to see if the impressive agreement among listeners extended to "ordinary folks" - and, surprise, surprise, it did. The obvious question is: How could they possibly know what good sound sounded like? It turns out that everyone seems to be able to recognize aspects of reproduced sound that are not "natural". In particular, all listeners objected to persistent audible resonances - booms, honks, nasality, shrillness, etc. The absence of resonances in transducers and enclosures turns out to the fundamental requirement for a "neutral/accurate" loudspeaker. General spectral humps, dips and tilts are there of course, but they tend to be correctable with tone controls or simple equalizers. These are the principal variations in recordings and at the basis of "personal preference", but, that said, most listeners prefer smooth, flat direct sound (on-axis performance). Trained listeners are simply those practiced in the detection of resonances. They deliver the same sound quality ratings as others, but they do it quickly and more reliably.
Olive, S.E. (2003). “Difference in Performance and Preference of Trained versus Untrained Listeners in Loudspeaker Tests: A Case Study”, J. Audio Eng. Soc., 51, pp. 806-825. Sean has found the same thing in headphone evaluations done with many, many listeners around the world, eliminating yet another suspected factor: national or cultural bias.
So, from this perspective the ideal loudspeaker is one that is fundamentally neutral, and this is something that we can determine with impressive precision from measurements alone (the spinorama being one example). With this as a starting point simple tone controls or equalizers can create whatever "sound" the listener personally prefers, with any recording (they vary). It is always possible to return to "neutral" to hear what was created for us to enjoy.
However, bear in mind that the quality and quantity (primarily extension) of low frequencies account for about 30% of one's overall assessment of sound quality. The room itself (with loudspeaker and listener locations) is the dominant factor below about 200 Hz. This is something that cannot be generalized - it is totally dependent on individual circumstances. There are ways to address this problem, as discussed in my books.
In reality, stereo itself is the most serious impediment to getting the level of sound and spatial quality we seek. Two channels are not enough, and ALL phantom images between the loudspeakers are corrupted by acoustical interference - each ear hears two sounds, one delayed. But humans are remarkably adaptable, and forgiving.
 
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