Genelec - technologie from the 80s? - Page 6

Oh please unless you were commenting on some POS Yamaha NS-10.. I would have to agree, but in the real world i.e. pro near/midfield reference studio monitors are about as acoustically “transparent" as it gets.

JBL LSR28P
http://www.jblpro.com/pub/recording/lsr28p.pdf
Frequency Response: 36 Hz to 22 kHz (+1, -1.5 dB from 50 Hz - 20 kHz)

Active crossover circuitry results in a 36 dB/Octave Linkwitz-Riley Electroacoustic response between low and high frequency devices for smooth transition in both the frequency and time domains.

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Meyer Sound HD-1
http://www.meyersound.com/pdf/produc...es/hd-1_ds.pdf
Frequency Response: 32 Hz to 22 kHz (+/-1 dB from 40 Hz to 20 kHz)

Optimized pole-zero filter combinations to complement transducer response and to achieve acoustical transparency and flat phase.

Genelec are dyanmic and accurate but can fatiguing. cold.
personaly i prefer JBL PRO Cinema speakers. or GKF. especially behind a screen. only way to reach last rows in a HT long 7-10meters.
their distorstion level is also very low. but we deal with 15 and 18'' gunners and large horns HF motors

Interesting thread, but the argument over whether the "studio" speakers (Genelec, JBL, etc.) are or are not more accurate vis-a-vis the Dynaudio C4's is one that can only be decided in a controlled double blind test, and it would probably be difficult to discern the difference at a 95% confidence interval if you had trained listeners - at least based on what I see here:
http://www.soundstagemagazine.com/me...confidence_c4/

Certainly no "house" sound that can be discerned by those measurements. Also great extension and distortion figures.

None, but i have good enough hearing to tell. moreover, you typically need to spend 3 times as much on a powered monitor to equal the quality of a passive audiophile speaker. i've heard top end PMCs and Genelecs that you couldn't give to me for free. Which isn't to say that there aren't some good ones, but i haven't heard one yet that i think is worth the money, but wouldn't mind if i did. i have customers that come in regularly to buy my speakers because they can't find any studio monitors that sound good, they hear ours and it's all over. or they come in *because* they've heard our speakers in a studio. Just saying.

Sorry, I simply do not believe a single word that you are saying. Either these linear speakers are wrongly set up, used in bad room acoustics or people talk about entry level studio monitors, that simple cannot do better than the usual stereo crap. There are tons of debates on how people cannot live with a linear speaker in their "empty styled modern" rooms. Yes, sorry, not the fault of the speaker. We are not talking 2 way KRK passive entry level stuff, but full active main monitors for midfield purposes.

Also it is quite commonly understood that the human brain has a very limited capability to remember sounds for a very long time. Then to interpolate the one experience to another one, different rooms, different eqs used, different music.....

Pls, pls, pls, really stop those high end voodoo glass ball discussions.

Andreas, first, I don't care whether you believe me or not. Second, they were as well set up as possible and still sounded quite mediocre compared to a high-fidelity speaker such as an NHT Xd, a Revel Studio/Salon, etc. Third, I am reminded every day what real life sounds like.

the debate must take into account distorsion and real capacity to handle the full spectrum.
for instance what one can hear as great bass is distorted bass that 'sound' louder but it containts a lot of harmonics. clean undistorted bass is a lot different....
no replacement for displacement or qty of subs for instance (and their placement)

high end hifi speakers: you pay a lot for looks design and finish. of course some sound great often requiring high end amplifiers also. i sell them so i know too

but physics are paramount and a system much fit the use it's intended for.
ie you don't put JBL CINEMA 4675C in a small living room nor do you place BW 801 in a mini cinema with 10 rows.
you don't feed the BW with 2x50w nor do you run the JBL or the BW with 2x2sq mm cables over 30meters.. (damping factor = zero )
etc
the Genelec are very analytical and don't forgive much. in hifi high end you use beefy filtered cable to modify the sound to please more and reduce distorsion somehow
etc etc....

this is not a who has the bigger one contest but physics of sound etc

To save this one for all time

Andreas,

As a strong believer in the value of blind testing, I'm going to part ways with you here and think you are misstating the case. Our auditory memory is no doubt pretty short. But that hardly means we can't remember whether we liked something or not! And that's all we're really talking about here - whether someone liked what they heard or not. So I think a person is perfectly capable of saying "I heard the Genelecs and did not like them as much as xxx". Whether that conclusion is based on the speaker or room is a whole different ball of wax as discussed earlier.

I mean at the price they can afford or that are readily available.

Or whether its based on he/she knows what the eff they are talking about

Hi Tripple-Q,

no problem with me, as long as you do not insult me like others do ;-)))). To have another opinion is no problem. As said I believe in blind A/B myself.

However, to be clear what I ment, that one persons will listen to a pairs of speakers, half year later he hears another different speaker and can tell exactly what he heard in full details in the first place.

Though yes, I agree, you will say something, I liked the bass better, or I lighted the highs better. But one will hardly be able to give a full description of how the upper bass was in detail, which instruments sounded how, was the staging much much better than what you hear now. You will not be able to describe the full details.

I mean, go for 3 or 4 weeks on a trip, come back and listen to your system. It's always refreshing.....and sometimes surprising.

However, that is by far, clearly off topic now.

+1

FWIW Andreas your conjecture above has been validated many times before, even on this very forum. In fact one AVS forum member (audiophile) stated he easly heard the difference between standard speaker cables when compared to his $$-Transparent OPUS- cables. He even practiced sighted and was convinced and ready… yet after a blind A/B testing his prowess to identify said “significant difference” for some reason failed him?

Being fully honest, as usual, like that dude audiophile (don't know the case) I could have been there 10 years ago as well ! In his shoes, no doubt. I fully admit it. I wandered to the famous "High End" Show in Frankfurt for years, to the IFA in Berlin, all small shows of stereophile magazines, attended dealer listenings, everything. I have a huge stack of old audiophile magazines.

But then one day a friend told me he made a blind a/b comparison with a good friend, the one that had a newly purchased Spectral power amplifier, against his own cheap Pioneer power amplifier. That friend was really enthusiastic about his Spectral. And guess yourself which amplifier he picked and liked best in the blind leveled test....no comment....

BTW: did I admit already that I'm biased and that I own the smallest Genelecs myself :-))))

In two weeks I get new stuff, I finally make a promise come true I gave myself a long time ago......yes, new studio grade entry level Geithain monitors ! Nothing else than studio monitors in my treated HT

Well duh I do a lot of editorializing. That's why I kept saying "in my opinion" and "for my preferences" and the like, and why I explicitly said why the Genelecs ABSOLUTELY would be a good choice if home theater was your primary goal, especially in a large space. Other people with that preference, which is different than mine, obviously will choose something that better suits their needs. As for 2-channel vs multichannel, there may be some room differences yes, but beyond that not a huge amount that would cause me suddenly to be surprised by a radically different sound from the same set of speakers.

The characteristics that are desirable for speakers for a multi-channel system can be much different than those that are desirable for 2-channel. For instance, a speaker with wide dispersion might be very enjoyable for 2-channel and "beat" the Genelecs for some listeners. For multi-channel music where the spacial cues are provided by the mix and the effects speakers, speakers with controlled directivity may be more desirable and better reproduce the sense of depth and spaciousness, the very opposite of the 2-channel scenario.

In other words, it's entirely possible that a person might prefer speaker A over speaker B for 2-channel, yet prefer speaker B over speaker A for multi-channel setup. I am not saying of course that is what you would prefer, you know what you prefer better than I do. I am simply pointing out that some people would.

You are overstating the case, or you don't understand the literature. We have very short term memory for small differences in sound, but we do not have short memory for all forms of sound as a norm. A coulple of examples that will make the point clear. If you go for a couple of months without hearing a close friend or relative, and then you heard them talking among other people, would you be able to remember what they sound like? Of course you would, you would even be able to differentiate them from many people that sounded similar. However, if the differences were very minor (and I'm talking very small), then you would need to compare the voices fairly quickly.

Another example is a person's voice in a phone. There are a number of people whose voice you can recognize on the phone even though you have not heard their voice on the phone for a few weeks, and the phone has a fairly limited frequency response (not to mention of audio limitations). Can others sound like them? Yes, but that does not deny the fact that you have a fairly good memory of what their voice sounds like on the phone.

PS Peter, is nice that you have discovered how to transcend the laws of physics and are able to design sound systems that require no fine tuning. You should write an article for the JAES, there are many audio engineers who must be shown the error of their ways.

Moreover, a sound that may be very pleasantly warm in stereo becomes far too colored when the same speakers are used in a multichannel arrangement. Conversely, very accurate speakers can sound warmer when used in a multichannel arrangement.

Hi Raul,
I agree to a certain extent on "frequence memory", as I also said to tripple Q, yes, you can remember well certain aspects, but voices e.g. have a limited bandwidth to which the ear/brain has adpated over hundreds of years (as we all like, for some reason, to communicate ). I'm not following the literature here, but also my own experience that I had to admit myself various times that I cannot remember in full details of everything I have heard. But it may well be that certain people can remember the full details, also for all channels, all electronics used, all settings used, how the room behaved, to what extent it influenced certain tones, etc. I cannot.

And on the design of a speaker my opinion differs as well. I do not see a difference in the dispersion desire for two or multi-channel. I personally see more the dispersion desire as an issue for a single sweet spot theater for one to 3 persons vs. multi seats HTs like Peter has built, where the sound coverage simply needs to be broader. In reality I stay with my opinion, I want to hear the room in the recording, not the room I'm listening in. I want alot of direct sound and controlled reflections. However, this is a foundamental debate that has nothing to do with why Genelec should be mediocre.....

Can you explain why? Is it related to the dispersion characteristics mentioned in an earlier post?

I think it is more of a frequency response issue. Warm/euphonic sounding speakers emphasize the lower midrange and roll the highs (in fact, studies suggest people prefer speakers with roll the high starting around 14 Khz), and in the context of stereo speakers it can give the sense of body to instruments, and a sense of fullness to the sound. The compromise is made to compensate for limitations in stereo reproduction. Conversely, if you have multiple speakers, by design you are addressing some of the limitations of stereo reproduction, the sense of body and fullness of the listening environment is created by rear and side speakers. However, if you now have multiple speakers designed to be euphonic, the overemphasis of particular frequency ranges becomes more apparent.

It's a combination of lower distortion as each speaker works less, plus less interaction with any given wall as sound is pulled from the left/right speakers and the fact that there is much less constructive/destructive interference from two sources playing the same sound. Speakers that can seem kind of forward, even 'overloaded', suddenly sound smooth, refined, focused, clean in surround mode.

Strangely, i find that wide dispersion speakers are even more important in surround systems, at least 5.1 types, to make for a seamless transition from speaker to speaker, rather than listening to 5 individual speakers. Ambience in the soundtrack doesn't do much for me if I can tell exactly where it's coming from, but then, i guess that's why people go down the dark road of dipole rear speakers.

People considering the higher-end Genelecs might want to also consider the Meyer Sound X-10:

review: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may0....htm?print=yes ...excerpts:

The system has been designed to provide peak levels of 136dB SPL with a continuous rating at an ear-splitting 126dB SPL....

I have auditioned many state-of-the-art monitoring systems, of all kinds, in some of the best acoustic spaces in the world, so I believe I have a reasonable grasp of what is currently available and considered to be 'the best'. I first auditioned the X10s in a less-than-ideal listening room at the Meyer Sound offices in Berkeley, California, but even there, their phenomenal transparency and accuracy was evident. Subsequent auditioning of a 5.1 installation of X10s in a properly designed control room reinforced these first impressions.

Distortion is simply not an issue with these loudspeakers, at any practical listening level — it is as if the control-room window has been removed and you are listening to the acoustic sound in the studio itself. The X10's astonishing clarity also reveals flaws in recording equipment, techniques and signal processing astonishingly well. By way of a test, I listened to some material processed through a well-known predictive data compression system. This kind of system damages unpredictable parts of signals — mainly transients — and whilst these artefacts usually go unnoticed or are hard to detect on most monitoring systems, they were certainly clearly audible on the X10s.

Stereo imaging and depth is pinpoint sharp, precise and stable over a remarkably wide listening area, and the character of the sound remains absolutely consistent where ever you are in the room. Whether this results from the almost perfect impulse response, the very low distortion, the well controlled off-axis dispersion, or a combination of these I could not tell you. All I know is that it works, and works extremely well. Instruments with naturally wide dynamic ranges and percussive transients are reproduced with breathtaking clarity and naturalness — no other monitoring system I know of reproduces brass instruments with as much fidelity.

The X10 is a most impressive monitor which, through the introduction of significant new technology, redefines the art and science of loudspeaker design.

another quote that ventures a bit off topic http://forums.soundandvisionmag.com/...hread.id=68968

During a recent trip to an audiophile club meeting in the Pacific Northwest, AVRev.com�s resident speaker setup guru Bob Hodas did a demo with Meyers X10 system that left many (if not all) of the audiophiles drooling and proclaiming it to produce the best sound they have every heard. At the end of the night, one of the members who has the money and the system to easily purchase X10s asked, �If I bought a pair, could I use my own amps?� This is inherently the audiophile problem. To say something was the best you ever heard at the ultimate price point and then want to somehow change what makes its successful describes the definition of the sickness known as audiophilia. I believe AVRev readers are simply more sophisticated and more informed as to the state of the art, leaving them less susceptible to the whims of pocket protector-wearing geeks selling obscure products that will be worth pennies on the dollar the day you walk out the audiophile dealer�s door.


The X-10 lists for about $24k each....almost 2x my per-front-speaker+amp intended budget, so I doubt I'll be auditioning them. But if anyone here does, I'd be interested in hearing feedback
.

what john Meyer does not know about audio... has not been discovered. and when it is discovered... John will likely be the guy doing the discovering.

John was one of the real instigators in the built in amplification movement. mainly because as he disccovered more and more what was wrong with amplifiers, he went to manufacturers to try to get them to fix them and they did not. so john made his own, put them in the speakers and called it macaroni.

Additional benefit is that all runs to the speakers are using balanced interconnects, so noise rejection is also huge.

Do these reviewers ever realize how much they overuse the same tiring cliches again and again? The guy quoted a few posts up managed to use about 100 of them in a single review:

But you forgot to say "it was as if a veil was removed" Mr. reviewer, one must always mention the removed veil .

I went back and re-read the full review (I had first read if a long time ago) and if you haven't, it is good reading. Certainly makes me question the wisdom of conventional compression driver systems (Klipsch, higher-end Genelec), and multiple-woofer speakers. The X10 looks darn well engineered. I wish they'd introduce an X5.

Utter nonsense.

(Sorry, I am late to this party)