-
WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
Genelec Ones- Overpriced ?
- Thread starter Pearljam5000
- Start date
Fotophred
Member
No
Longer answer is more complex
They are a mastering tool not designed for home audio
In my case they are used for home audio and movies.
Genelecs produce music in a more pleasing manner than any of the 40 or more pairs of speakers I have had here.
Try getting a good equaliser, room correction, amp remote pre amp and DAC that work with your speakers in your room and the Genelecs look to be a bargain.
Have listened to a number of expensive (US D $30,000 up) "Hi Fi" systems. Some are dull, some are shrill some lack in resolving details while others have no bottom end. A number will perform well within a narrow band of music while others will provide a distortion the owners like.
The Genelecs will match those systems that have a narrow band of excellence while having the ability to perform over the full range of music.
Genelecs are not for everyone, being accurate they will sound different to what most are listening to and may be judged down for that reason.
Longer answer is more complex
They are a mastering tool not designed for home audio
In my case they are used for home audio and movies.
Genelecs produce music in a more pleasing manner than any of the 40 or more pairs of speakers I have had here.
Try getting a good equaliser, room correction, amp remote pre amp and DAC that work with your speakers in your room and the Genelecs look to be a bargain.
Have listened to a number of expensive (US D $30,000 up) "Hi Fi" systems. Some are dull, some are shrill some lack in resolving details while others have no bottom end. A number will perform well within a narrow band of music while others will provide a distortion the owners like.
The Genelecs will match those systems that have a narrow band of excellence while having the ability to perform over the full range of music.
Genelecs are not for everyone, being accurate they will sound different to what most are listening to and may be judged down for that reason.
BDE
Active Member
- Joined
- Nov 11, 2020
- Messages
- 135
- Likes
- 275
Sebastiaan de Vries
Active Member
I paid significantly more for them than anywhere in the world due to the high import taxes where I live. Yet I think they are worthy of my purchase price since there isn’t anything in my view that match their performance (in my setup). I consider them a bargain for what they deliver.
Well sit close and listen. Turn your head and tell me which one you want. That one factor is enough for me not to want to save that difference in price.
All inclusive price with full room correction and amps? They are a bargain. The the K&H are even more of a bargain but that might be the only exception. None of these other speakers or monitors will come close.
KEF LS50 was good but not really in the same league. It’s hard to explain why. Somehow I liked the LSX better. Again I don’t know why.
I like you brought that up. Alas, the model is not only flawed but plain wrong ( I actually looked it up). Think of market saturation. The price wouldn't get lower than to a certain point which is determined by the cost of production. Likewise for the price not going beyond a certain point determined by the other needs of a potentional customer which ask for payment also. Supply and demand are *not* a pair of terms that allow such a simple model to work.
In answering the question, a simple marketing ploy. One can sell 100 with a smaller profit "X" per item, because it is cheap for the individual customer. You can sell 10 items with a bigger profit "Y" per item, because the customers won't pay the lifted price too often. In the first case the profit is 100 times X, in the second profit is 10 times Y. One would yield the same profit if in the second case the price is like 9 times higher than in the first case.
That is how "high-end" works. It is not that the quality is so high that only few would actually value it. It is only so that the "high-end" customer doesn't cross check with his needs and is fooled. Simple, period.
The benefit for the OEM is not an extreme profit, it is the lower risk with financing fewer product with lower risk of loosing the investment. That's why they can afford to offer nearly every b/s. It might go to the bin, but if the market reacts positively, helluva!
Another simple all-day example is the pricing of speciality cologne / perfume.
Is Genelec on such tracks when selling the "One"? For sure not. If all European made in a Skandinavian country the prices appear to be on the lower side, actually. KEF asks for 1000 per R3meta, China made w/o amplification, w/o DSP.
w
If you go to the Apple Store with an Apple Care replacement request the basically said they don’t care. He said the BOM is about $300. You paid $200 for Apple Care and now $99 for the replacement.
He said that you paid for the biggest cost when you bought the phone - the software. You can add R&D to that. They only care that you pay that once.
After that you can have replacements at BOM cost for the first one and now as many as you want for $99.
I think the BOM itself is not very high on these however the R&D they hope to recoup over thousands of sales. They make a gamble on that. Putting that up front and paying interest on it. Waiting years to recoup it.
This is isn’t some BS thing that gets it value from being artificially scarce or from dumb logo on it. There is an actual engineering value in them. All those drivers are new. That array is new. The cabinets are new. The top one is aluminum and required investment in the dies. Who knows how many engineers worked on it for how many years?
Also the product comes with a calibration of each amp. Personal service and in home/studio calibration apparently.
I wish they’d let me have the top cabinet and let me mate it to my w371. But they have standards. I really wish at some point they would let me do that.
At some point maybe release a 8371 that mates to the w371. That would be cool.
Yep this is far from a Veblen good. That’s Rolex and those other brands that charge $1000+ for about $5 of coated canvas made by Chinese laborers.
If you go to the Apple Store with an Apple Care replacement request the basically said they don’t care. He said the BOM is about $300. You paid $200 for Apple Care and now $99 for the replacement.
He said that you paid for the biggest cost when you bought the phone - the software. You can add R&D to that. They only care that you pay that once.
After that you can have replacements at BOM cost for the first one and now as many as you want for $99.
I think the BOM itself is not very high on these however the R&D they hope to recoup over thousands of sales. They make a gamble on that. Putting that up front and paying interest on it. Waiting years to recoup it.
This is isn’t some BS thing that gets it value from being artificially scarce or from dumb logo on it. There is an actual engineering value in them. All those drivers are new. That array is new. The cabinets are new. The top one is aluminum and required investment in the dies. Who knows how many engineers worked on it for how many years?
Also the product comes with a calibration of each amp. Personal service and in home/studio calibration apparently.
I wish they’d let me have the top cabinet and let me mate it to my w371. But they have standards. I really wish at some point they would let me do that.
At some point maybe release a 8371 that mates to the w371. That would be cool.
Last edited:
Thing is, for me personally, the Genelecs are a real, well calculated product. It allows with quite assessable revenue on a mainly professionalized market to plan for keeping the company afloat and spare some extra for innovation research. To put it a bit pathetical, it isn't fully evolved capitalism, but humans at work. I think the Scandinavians take some pride in this. But behold, there are more modern Scandinavians around also ...
You mean IKEA? Haha. Yeah I think it’s not an easy game really. It’s a gamble with every product development.
They don’t play silly games like making the price high at first and then discounting. It’s just this is the price and that will be the price until EOL barring small inflation adjustments.
They have an idea of how big the market is and hopefully over 5-10 years they can get the product into a certain % of those studios.
This really is like the death knell for those 60s brands from the UK which I won’t name but officially their era is done now. This has been a 15 year journey for them to get here. I don’t know who can even touch this.
Danish ... ... anyway, I bought KEF R3s lately for discount due to the newer model. I was so excited by the excellent engineering, that appeared to me as really honest. Blown by experiencing some serious respect by the manufacturer. That's something that isn't a regular thing today.
I wouldn't pay the 4k for a pair of genelecs, though. I don't think stereo as such is worth it, that simple. The affordable price depends on the need and what I'm going to do with the product. For me it's just entertainment, and for this purpose there are always creative alternatives ;-)
Yeah KEF is true class act when it comes to service. The service I received from them was incredible. I cannot say enough good things about them.
The R3 really is the best value out there and if you’re willing to be creative you can even make it active with a MiniDSP and do Dirac room correction.
It gets rid of the biggest problem with the LS50 - that it is 2 way.
It’s a great platform to mix in a little DIY and likely get similar results to the Ones for less than half the cost.
It depends on which economic class you are in, whether the price is serious money or mere pocket change.
Depends more on your reputation and how much tracking, mixing, mastering business you get.
My reference was to buyers of the speaker who do not make a living in audio using it.
Last edited:
Very very few people would consider $75k to be pocket change. I mean yeah we hear stories about billionaires all day these days.
It started around 2002 with the whole celebrity chef thing. Then we got celebrity “mixologists” and celebrity whatevers.
Then we got celebrity billionaires with new media writing about the opinions of Bill Gates as if anyone cares what he thinks about anything other than MSDOS because he got lucky that IBM licensed it rather than buying it. Suddenly this guy is an “authority” on everything.
Then Elon and Bezos and all those clowns.
They get so much press these days we think billionaires are common.
I doubt we have any because those kinds of people have better things to do than to post here.
I’m sure we have some very high net worth individuals here but not on the level that $75k is pocket change. Because I suspect most people here actually earned their money. If you didn’t then why bother?
Just buy everything and have staff set up and listen to it and prep it for you.
Most of us here work for and earn our money which is why we care so much. Many of us save up to get the level of audio quality we want.
It’s more likely that most of us see it as a crap ton of money but that we are passionate about it enough to work our behinds off to obtain it.
$75K for those speakers? Wow!
I remember back around 1999 I went to a dealer (I was broke) and auditioned this mark levinson plus (honestly can’t even remember which speakers) system that ran about $130k.
Back in 1999 in 1999 dollars. That’s like $200k at least.
The best part? Sounded like nothing. I got no feeling or emotion from it.
Fast forward to 2021 and I heard the $8k a Genelec 8351b. I don’t want to talk about it. Just uncontrollable emotion. I’ll leave it there.
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2023
- Messages
- 674
- Likes
- 1,052
I had KH310 for two years and now I'm working on 8351s and I would say Genelecs are fairly priced, but they may seem expensive just because KH310s are priced too low. When looking for high end compact 3-way active studio monitors people usually choose from 8351, KH310 and ATC SCM25, all of these are very good and play in the same league with different design choices and emphasis on different aspects of the sound reproduction, but the price wise they look funky: 2,2k€ per piece of KH310, 4k€ for Genelec and 5k€ for ATC. Clearly Neumanns are underpriced even after the recent price hike