Switching from Genelec 8361A to Palmer Orbit 11?

[Xormungar]

I'm currently using a pair of Genelec 8361A's with an RME ADI-2 DAC FS and GLM kit.
Ever since Palmer has released their Orbit 11, I've been wondering whether it would be beneficial to switch to a 5.1 system - 5x Orbit 11, 1x DynAudio Core Sub and Topping DM7 with Sonarworks SoundID. Later, when finances permit, I'd switch to 7.1.4 or 9.1.6. There's also the option of having a 7.0.4 system with Orbits which doesn't appeal to me as much as the one with the sub.

For those wondering about my room - it's really bad, but it's gonna be turned into a true studio (listening room) in a couple of months. It's less than 20 m^2 and the 8361A's have exactly the right amount of power for me. The thing is - The Ones don't satisfy me enough with the bass depth; I need a sub, so my alternative path is to keep The Ones and purchase a DynAudio Core Sub in the future.
I also want to add that I've had a DynAudio 18S subwoofer which I had to sell to buy the Genelec's. It was truly a wonderful subwoofer - but it was also just too quiet for me. Only when it would clip would I get basically what I wanted to hear and feel - a clean, deep kick.

Soon, I'm gonna demo the Orbits, but I don't want to make a stupid move anyway, so I'm asking you - what do you think?

 

[Comma]

1. Adding sub/s to your 8361A will take it to the next level, every speaker need subs IMO.
2. Expanding later with more The Ones, dream system.

 

[AudioJester]

5.1 with Orbits is perfect for an AVR with Dirac ART, which will cover than non-cardioid frequency range.
Given the bass extension of the Orbits - even with 1 sub, should sound amazing.

 

[tineared]

I don't believe in downsizing main speakers unless you are moving to a much smaller space, and even then...
Get the sub now and add center/surrounds at your leisure

 

[Mort]

This is not the way to choose a system lol.

You need a GLM sub imo.

 

[Jiraya369]

why does it need to be the palmer? I think the Ascilab F6B/F6Bs, if available, are the best neumann/genelec alternatives.

and why does the sub need to be a dynaudio core? what do you mean bass depth, low end extension?

Wdym the sub is something you couldnt hear until it clipped? I mean there must have been some extremely poor setting up of the sub if that's the case


I'd say keep the 8361a, get some F6Bs, and if you need to get rid of the 8361a then get neumann kh310/ascilab a6b, and the biggest sub you can get and get 2. Dual SVS PB 1000 Pro/RSL Speedwoofer 12S. Sub bass is all about spl capabilities AND calibration, if you cant calibrate you wont get good low end performance. You didnt send the distance from speakers, only the room size.

I wouldnt exactly trust sonarworks, the same people who say it's good also talk about midrange detail and all that, seems like a sham to me. Best to learn to calibrate it all yourself. Get a decent set of speakers, pair em up with nice surrounds, calibrate them all to have a similar signature if there's any issue (hopefully neutrality) and calibrate the low end. There's not much more to say you just need neutral speakers and speakers that can get loud enough at your listening distance.

 

[Xormungar]

why does it need to be the palmer? I think the Ascilab F6B/F6Bs, if available, are the best neumann/genelec alternatives.

and why does the sub need to be a dynaudio core? what do you mean bass depth, low end extension?

Wdym the sub is something you couldnt hear until it clipped? I mean there must have been some extremely poor setting up of the sub if that's the case


I'd say keep the 8361a, get some F6Bs, and if you need to get rid of the 8361a then get neumann kh310/ascilab a6b, and the biggest sub you can get and get 2. Dual SVS PB 1000 Pro/RSL Speedwoofer 12S. Sub bass is all about spl capabilities AND calibration, if you cant calibrate you wont get good low end performance. You didnt send the distance from speakers, only the room size.

I wouldnt exactly trust sonarworks, the same people who say it's good also talk about midrange detail and all that, seems like a sham to me. Best to learn to calibrate it all yourself. Get a decent set of speakers, pair em up with nice surrounds, calibrate them all to have a similar signature if there's any issue (hopefully neutrality) and calibrate the low end. There's not much more to say you just need neutral speakers and speakers that can get loud enough at your listening distance.

Thanks for the comprehensive reply!

It doesn't have to be Palmer; it's just that it looks very promising, and at a competitive price point.
It doesn't have to be DynAudio Core Sub; it could be any sub, it's just that at that price point, I don't think there are better options (if you can prove wrong, I'll gladly accept it).

Regarding clipping, I meant that it wasn't able to reproduce the kind of kick I wanted to feel - it just didn't have enough power.
Neumann is out of the question because it isn't coaxial (I sit close to the speakers).

Now that Mort mentioned it, I might go for 2x 7370A when finances permit.

Do you think ported subs would be okay for my room?

 

[Jiraya369]

2x 7370A

unless you need glm/cant calibrate yourself, i'd suggest quad subs of a slightly smaller size. The main appeal of Genelec subs is the easy integration, meaning you can plug and get good quality easily. Higher price does not mean they make better subs inherently. Subs are all about SPL, loudness capabilities.

Therefore, look at the CEA-2034 dataset and find out peak spl capabilities and get subs. It's best to get 4 subwoofers, 2 is more than good enough but with your budget i'd go for 4, no more is needed and does not bring much improvements. check this out, some great bloke compiled cea-2034 data (basically how loud each sub can play at each frequency).

and yeah it's still crazy that the big 18inch sub just didnt have power, something really was off mate. And understandable, coaxials are great at close range though at such close ranges even a Genelec 8331A is good enough, you still havent mentioned how close exactly.

Ported vs Sealed dont matter. What matters is the FR (as that's the sound produced by the sub) and the SPL capabilities, that is, does the sub compress the sound down to 98 db for example when you ask for 100 db or if it has distortion. That's it. Sealed subs have less low end than ported, in both FR and SPL capabilities, thus they're considered "clean".

You just need to be able to calibrate it.

I used Gemini to make a visual comparison of the data from sweetchaos's sheet and audioholics's website

You can see as a subwoofer even the 1200 dollar PB-2000 Pro beats the 7070A, which I think is just the 7370A without GLM calibration. The 7370A also has more power but power increases affect speakers in a logarithmic manner so 150W is not going to mean 10 db increase, but rather 1-4 db.

Therefore. For the maximum output within a reasonable budget, quad PB-3000 would be sufficient for basically any room. If you want to go full ballers then the PB-17 Ultra is a good one. If you have spare cash lying around the JTR Captivator stuff might be up your alley.

If you're making this investment, I'd suggest making sure your neighbours aren't going to be bothered. All of this is just not all that complicated tbh just make sure that the phase is aligned, there is no massive delay between subwoofers and speakers, and that you calibrate the subs and speakers with EQ, which is also called room correction. That's it. Multiple subs smooth out the response and allow slightly higher headroom.

 

[Sokel]

unless you need glm/cant calibrate yourself, i'd suggest quad subs of a slightly smaller size. The main appeal of Genelec subs is the easy integration, meaning you can plug and get good quality easily. Higher price does not mean they make better subs inherently. Subs are all about SPL, loudness capabilities.

Therefore, look at the CEA-2034 dataset and find out peak spl capabilities and get subs. It's best to get 4 subwoofers, 2 is more than good enough but with your budget i'd go for 4, no more is needed and does not bring much improvements. check this out, some great bloke compiled cea-2034 data (basically how loud each sub can play at each frequency).

and yeah it's still crazy that the big 18inch sub just didnt have power, something really was off mate. And understandable, coaxials are great at close range though at such close ranges even a Genelec 8331A is good enough, you still havent mentioned how close exactly.

Ported vs Sealed dont matter. What matters is the FR (as that's the sound produced by the sub) and the SPL capabilities, that is, does the sub compress the sound down to 98 db for example when you ask for 100 db or if it has distortion. That's it. Sealed subs have less low end than ported, in both FR and SPL capabilities, thus they're considered "clean".

You just need to be able to calibrate it.

I used Gemini to make a visual comparison of the data from sweetchaos's sheet and audioholics's website

View attachment 516125
You can see as a subwoofer even the 1200 dollar PB-2000 Pro beats the 7070A, which I think is just the 7370A without GLM calibration. The 7370A also has more power but power increases affect speakers in a logarithmic manner so 150W is not going to mean 10 db increase, but rather 1-4 db.

Therefore. For the maximum output within a reasonable budget, quad PB-3000 would be sufficient for basically any room. If you want to go full ballers then the PB-17 Ultra is a good one. If you have spare cash lying around the JTR Captivator stuff might be up your alley.

If you're making this investment, I'd suggest making sure your neighbours aren't going to be bothered. All of this is just not all that complicated tbh just make sure that the phase is aligned, there is no massive delay between subwoofers and speakers, and that you calibrate the subs and speakers with EQ, which is also called room correction. That's it. Multiple subs smooth out the response and allow slightly higher headroom.

Depending the target, FR is not the only deciding factor.

For example some just want to relieve mains from high distortion low at a short of a pseudo-3-way.
But what good would it be exchanging a set of distortion to another?

Ask Gemini to use this thread for example, it's a treasure cove of data:

I measured 10 subwoofers.

Hi, it's been a while! I would like to thank the people who made this project possible on a scale never before imagined in South Korea. I measured a total of 10 subwoofers, including my own DIY subwoofer(L26RO4Y), and measured them to the CEA-2010 standard using a Klippel TBM module. Below are...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Xormungar]

unless you need glm/cant calibrate yourself, i'd suggest quad subs of a slightly smaller size. The main appeal of Genelec subs is the easy integration, meaning you can plug and get good quality easily. Higher price does not mean they make better subs inherently. Subs are all about SPL, loudness capabilities.

Therefore, look at the CEA-2034 dataset and find out peak spl capabilities and get subs. It's best to get 4 subwoofers, 2 is more than good enough but with your budget i'd go for 4, no more is needed and does not bring much improvements. check this out, some great bloke compiled cea-2034 data (basically how loud each sub can play at each frequency).

and yeah it's still crazy that the big 18inch sub just didnt have power, something really was off mate. And understandable, coaxials are great at close range though at such close ranges even a Genelec 8331A is good enough, you still havent mentioned how close exactly.

Ported vs Sealed dont matter. What matters is the FR (as that's the sound produced by the sub) and the SPL capabilities, that is, does the sub compress the sound down to 98 db for example when you ask for 100 db or if it has distortion. That's it. Sealed subs have less low end than ported, in both FR and SPL capabilities, thus they're considered "clean".

You just need to be able to calibrate it.

I used Gemini to make a visual comparison of the data from sweetchaos's sheet and audioholics's website

View attachment 516125
You can see as a subwoofer even the 1200 dollar PB-2000 Pro beats the 7070A, which I think is just the 7370A without GLM calibration. The 7370A also has more power but power increases affect speakers in a logarithmic manner so 150W is not going to mean 10 db increase, but rather 1-4 db.

Therefore. For the maximum output within a reasonable budget, quad PB-3000 would be sufficient for basically any room. If you want to go full ballers then the PB-17 Ultra is a good one. If you have spare cash lying around the JTR Captivator stuff might be up your alley.

If you're making this investment, I'd suggest making sure your neighbours aren't going to be bothered. All of this is just not all that complicated tbh just make sure that the phase is aligned, there is no massive delay between subwoofers and speakers, and that you calibrate the subs and speakers with EQ, which is also called room correction. That's it. Multiple subs smooth out the response and allow slightly higher headroom.

Thank you!

I'm sitting at an arms length from the speaker, so <1m.
DynAudio sub wasn't 18 inches, rather, it was 2x opposing 10 inch drivers.
The graph is very helpful!

 

[Smarrtee04]

I recently tried out a 5.0 palmer orbit system with Dirac ART. In comparison to kii three bxt and Dutch and Dutch 8c (both of which I currently have), Dirac ART with the palmers really narrows the gap across pretty much all metrics that matter (to me personally, with relatively modest SPL requirements), despite the other speakers being objectively and subjectively better just by themselves. I'd really encourage you to try it out and see.

Also, I'm now a believer that a well calibrated 5.x system is a much more enjoyable experience vs 2.x (again, this is personal), so that alone is worth trying out if you haven't yet, atleast to see where your preferences lie.

 

[Mort]

unless you need glm/cant calibrate yourself, i'd suggest quad subs of a slightly smaller size.

I'm gonna disagree with this strongly. One 7380a and glm are an excellent choice.

 

[90sNintendoKid]

I've just setup my new pair of Orbits in my 4.4 system. I'm going to do a Dirac ART calibration as soon as I've got time.

If the post EQ measurements look good then I'm probably going to go for at least 5.4.4 or 7.4.4 with all Orbits and K&M speaker poles like I've seen with a few Genelec Atmos systems in this forum.

 

[Jiraya369]

I'm gonna disagree with this strongly. One 7380a and glm are an excellent choice.

physics

 

[Jiraya369]

Thank you!

I'm sitting at an arms length from the speaker, so <1m.
DynAudio sub wasn't 18 inches, rather, it was 2x opposing 10 inch drivers.
The graph is very helpful!

at that distance, i'd suggest getting genelec 8331as and using the subs, i see no reason to get far bigger stuff tbh, maybe the 8341s but that's it.

and woah then the dynaudio is kind of a weird product lol way too expensive for what it is but that's a dynaudio ig.

 

[Jiraya369]

Depending the target, FR is not the only deciding factor.

For example some just want to relieve mains from high distortion low at a short of a pseudo-3-way.
But what good would it be exchanging a set of distortion to another?

Ask Gemini to use this thread for example, it's a treasure cove of data:

I measured 10 subwoofers.

Hi, it's been a while! I would like to thank the people who made this project possible on a scale never before imagined in South Korea. I measured a total of 10 subwoofers, including my own DIY subwoofer(L26RO4Y), and measured them to the CEA-2010 standard using a Klippel TBM module. Below are...

www.audiosciencereview.com

that's why i gave the cea 2010 dataset using gemini, those arent FR, those are peak spl numbers with respect to distortion. The FR is usually flat for all these subs, the smaller it is the less flat it is till 20hz.

 

[IngMishael]

I'm currently using a pair of Genelec 8361A's with an RME ADI-2 DAC FS and GLM kit.
Ever since Palmer has released their Orbit 11, I've been wondering whether it would be beneficial to switch to a 5.1 system - 5x Orbit 11, 1x DynAudio Core Sub and Topping DM7 with Sonarworks SoundID. Later, when finances permit, I'd switch to 7.1.4 or 9.1.6. There's also the option of having a 7.0.4 system with Orbits which doesn't appeal to me as much as the one with the sub.

For those wondering about my room - it's really bad, but it's gonna be turned into a true studio (listening room) in a couple of months. It's less than 20 m^2 and the 8361A's have exactly the right amount of power for me. The thing is - The Ones don't satisfy me enough with the bass depth; I need a sub, so my alternative path is to keep The Ones and purchase a DynAudio Core Sub in the future.
I also want to add that I've had a DynAudio 18S subwoofer which I had to sell to buy the Genelec's. It was truly a wonderful subwoofer - but it was also just too quiet for me. Only when it would clip would I get basically what I wanted to hear and feel - a clean, deep kick.

Soon, I'm gonna demo the Orbits, but I don't want to make a stupid move anyway, so I'm asking you - what do you think?

lol what?

 

[Sokel]

that's why i gave the cea 2010 dataset using gemini, those arent FR, those are peak spl numbers with respect to distortion. The FR is usually flat for all these subs, the smaller it is the less flat it is till 20hz.

Simple CEA's 2010 (not 2010B) accepted 30% THD is more of a safety measurement and not a quality one.
Not by far.

At other threads, (like today's C8C) we argue about far less distortion down low. The thread I posted pretty much shows what's going on down there when different tasks (or price) are the target.

 

[Jiraya369]

Simple CEA's 2010 (not 2010B) accepted 30% THD is more of a safety measurement and not a quality one.
Not by far.

At other threads, (like today's C8C) we argue about far less distortion down low. The thread I posted pretty much shows what's going on down there when different tasks (or price) are the target.

i dont care what people argue about, audibility in lower frequencies is lower, these are just the highest spl numbers, not what you would normally hear during playback at different volumes AND if you have multiple subs then you have more headroom.

Although distortion graphs are nice, unless you listen extremely loud at 10m distances, i dont really get your point at all.

not exceeding 10% distortion above 20hz around 120 db spl and being below 5% below that.

here's a more modest sub the 12S

People are happy buying towers but somehow these levels of distortion in ultra low frequencies is something they're going to argue about? lol people will always quarrel about unnecessary stuff, especially in audiophile sites. I care about what is audible and relevant, everything else is just pointless practically though nice to admire good engineering.

 

[Sokel]

i dont care what people argue about, audibility in lower frequencies is lower, these are just the highest spl numbers, not what you would normally hear during playback at different volumes AND if you have multiple subs then you have more headroom.

Although distortion graphs are nice, unless you listen extremely loud at 10m distances, i dont really get your point at all.
View attachment 516251View attachment 516252
not exceeding 10% distortion above 20hz around 120 db spl and being below 5% below that.

here's a more modest sub the 12S

View attachment 516253
View attachment 516254
People are happy buying towers but somehow these levels of distortion in ultra low frequencies is something they're going to argue about? lol people will always quarrel about unnecessary stuff, especially in audiophile sites. I care about what is audible and relevant, everything else is just pointless practically though nice to admire good engineering.

Check out C8C's thread (A6B as well, it's the first thread where this audibility thresholds got under scrutiny) , read about what Amir perceived as audible distortion and then check out the charts to see their actual % at the given SPL.
Audible distortion does not distinguish subs from woofers, etc, is just there when it manifests itself as audible.

Unless you don't trust Amir's perception.
So...