Nearfields for audiophile listening?

Nope I still have my opinion that they're trashy. They're like scaled up bad modern movie THX speakers that just get loud and sound okay without breaking up. They're sharp and the detail sucks for the price. Some people like the effect compression drivers right in their face though even if they're lo-fi compared to soft domes. ATC have light bass and Quested dark treble. JBL have both punchy bass and treble. I have no idea wth someone like Serious wants other than he likes horns and might tolerate the lack of detail.

 

Yeah they're hella overpriced but look at all the bullshit people are buying and then look at an ATC woofer or dome. That money is going to stuff beyond cabinet work, r&d for value engineering to rip you off even more, and glowing lights.

 

K&H O300 used their in-house dome mid. Earlier bigger monitors had the atc dome, which they deemed to expensive and being inferior to their own.

 

Interesting. Did Sennheiser cut costs and had to give some excuse for ATC not selling them drivers anymore or are K&H just objectivists hyperfocusing on measurements like THD? The 300 and 310 lost to every small ATCs for detail but were much better overall speaker until the big ones, that finally blow all the Neumann line away but cost 10,000 more dollars.​

 

I don't really like horns, no. Honestly, I'm not so sure what I want from nearfields, either. I guess I want a very lively, resolving sound that sounds fast with good clarity and I require three dimensional imaging with good coherency. I think we have a different definition of detail.

I'll try to give the ATCs a try again. I've heard them before at dealer events and at shows and was never impressed, but you never know.
I'm generally not a fan of soft domes, but I also dislike metal tweeters. AMTs usually drive me nuts which is why I was surprised that the Adam AMT seemed pretty good to me. The HEDD seemed a bit smoother to me going by 2 minute show impressions. I generally seem to like matching dispersion of the tweeter and midrange at the crossover frequency and aligning the dZ, so a waveguide would seem preferred to me, but a smooth contour, not something like the JBL bookshelves use. I also seem to gravitate towards higher efficiency drivers and drivers with lower moving mass per surface area, but maybe that's placebo. I don't think it's placebo that I seem to prefer well-done speakers with 1st order crossovers, but I can't think of any 1st order mid to tweeter XO that I liked. The phase shift from the crossovers is audible is to me in blind tests, though.

Your description that the KH310A sound soft and can't do guitars is probably the main reason I didn't like them when put into your words. The individual string plucks in Hotel California all blended together, which I attributed to lacking resolution. I think my definition of resolution probably depends on the XO parts as much as the drivers, though and that's where almost all manufacturers cheap out. For powered monitors it's the amps, I guess.

 

It sounds like you don't really know what you want and should just buy something magnetically shielded. Adam and HEDD are not. Buy a soft dome one so you won't hate yourself. The AMTs and compression drivers and metal domes might make you hate yourself long term. Soft domes perform better in active speakers than they do in boomy audiophile hifi rigs hooked up to wimpy meme power amps. You gotta just man and up buy something. I had to do that recently.

Maybe the recording on Hell Freezes Over really is just muddy for guitar? It is a live recording. What I've always noticed is the kicks are boomy triggered samples or eqed, compressed, and boosted very poorly. I have no idea why audiophiles love that record. Pretty much all monitors will reveal the annoying production.

Most of these parts are cheap. Unless the manufacturer builds their own drivers, the drivers are OEM. ATC, JBL, Dynaudio build their own. You're otherwise paying for the reliability and the design which you can't do yourself. Cheap monitors are cheaped out everywhere. You pay more, they're less cheaped out. Get to ATC and Quested levels, and the power amps are anything but cheaped out. ATC sells very similar amps to their plate amps as hi-fi power amps. You just pay for that and the design. Or the lack of design with regards to Quested who believe that all waveguides color the sound.

 

This was prior to the Sennheiser acquisition. If you ask me, it's a sound decision business wise. Last thing you need is to be dependent on a company with whom you're directly competing.

 

Talking about atc, I've heard that atc scm 19 is better at low volume listening than atc scm 11. Anyone has any experience?

 

All ATC are bass light for their size compared to other brands. They aim for low distortion and don’t raise the bass in the crossover. Get something punchier and maybe even slightly v shaped for low volume listening. Why not Proacs, PMCs, better KEFs (no ls50 or funny shaped junk) or certain JBLs?

 

cool

did you try those dynaudio contour next to the blades?

My opinion of the blade is that: small mids sounds small. end of story

if your looking for small nearfields, I havent heard or owned better then ATC: it just sounds right.

 

The JBL LSR 305 mkii is a big improvement over the first one in the highs. The tweeter is a lot better than the original. The port and tweeter is better than on the KRK 5 and vocals are much more natural but I can't help but feel the KRK woofer had more detail. These are good cheap monitors to destroy. The bigger 300s aren't very good.

 

Bit a bullet I've been avoiding and picked up Sonarworks Reference 4 Studio + Mic. I'll have to do the measurements again after I get my room cleaned up. It's still a mess after I moved my entire desk to a different wall and piled up crap everywhere.

Here's the Dynaudio BM12A results. Sounds great with and without correction.

 

What, getting rid of all those wonderful absorbers and defractors? That'll make things worse.

Best are the ones with the infinite fractal surface covering that the ignorant call dust.

 

Damn, that's a sexy curve. The 130Hz peak can get troublesome on some bass tracks when someone hits the right note. Otherwise you should be fine!

 

That is so weird! I have almost the same curve as you! The sub area looks the same if I put mine in polarity mode.

 

I heard the new Genelec 8361's at a friend's place yesterday. They have the newest revision of Genelec's coaxial driver, alongside with improved digital processing (from my understanding they have implemented an FPGA based D/S converter for the SAM series speakers, which is now even more advanced than before [1]). These changes can also be found in the new 8351b model. They were in a near field setup, wall-mounted "levitating" about 35 centimeters above a table. The listening distance was probably somewhere between 70-80cm. The set also had a Genelec 7380 subfoower, which was below the table between the speakers. The set was calibrated with the Genelec's proprietary GLM software. Music was played through a desktop PC with and internal RME HDSPe AIO card, which was connected to the speakers with an AES/EBU cable. Very impressive looking setup, shame I cannot provide a picture this time.

Had a good couple hours of listening time with various music samples. Be it metal music (Opeth), pop (David Bowie) or even synthwave (Dynatron/Perturbator), color me impressed. All the trademarks of Genelec's house sound were present (them being apparent neutrality and clarity, very solid stereo image, sense of "easiness" at every possible volume level etc.) but this time without any digititus or artificialness, that in my opinion, have been present in all previous Genelec SAM speakers. I think it would be fair the describe them as being on the dry side of "musicalness", but not sterile or dry, or without capability of inciting emotions in the listener. With some material, I could detect a very slight amount of veil, even if they still managed to sound extremely clear at the same time - it's quite hard to explain. I am not sure if it was because of the speakers, the AES/EBU source or the actual source material. But in any case, I wouldn't describe them as "veiled".

8361's are still bright or "studio neutral" sounding, so you might find them somewhat fatiguing in longer listening sessions. This happened to me, but it was quite late when I finished the demo and I was actually tired at that point. At least you can EQ them down if necessary.

I do want an another demo. Before this, I've had longer demos of 8331 and 8351(a). The 8331 has solid imaging and packs quite a punch for a speaker of it's size. The treble on the other hand... sounds like what I'd imagine getting a blowjob from a cheese grater would feel like - grating, unnatural and welcomed only by sadists. 8351(a) is slightly better, but has unnatural timbre - soft midrange, sharp treble and some grain on the whole frequency domain (I don't know if that makes any sense, but you'll understand after hearing them).


[1] This is based on hearsay, my friend heard this from Genelec's R&D engineer, supposedly

 

Genelec house sound is retained? Are they still mid scooped with a warm low end, and fatiguing metal tweeter top end? I always thought Genelecs were more fatiguing than Yamahas, including the later, duller Studio versions of NS10m

So they fixed that “uneasiness” of the dsp Genelec sound? I like the pre dsp, class ab ones, both the 1031a and the 8040 type lens. that seemed to embrace whatever Genelec goes for Soundwise more and weren’t trying to be something they’re not. I wouldn’t buy them or work on them, but they were respectable, if fatiguing and unclear speakers.

 

Retained, yes, but depends on what exact model are you comparing them to. I've also got extended experience with 1032a's and 8030b's (both with class AB amps) and with the newer G3b's (equivalent to 8030C's, these have class D amps).

- 1032a, maybe a tad darker/fuller sounding than the 8000 series, but has a slightly shouty or/and uneven transition from the woofer to the tweeter.
- 8030b, a tad less "rich" and warm (but still not nearing sterility) than 1032a, but a little bit more even around the crossover region. Also maybe a smidgen less focused, you got more plankton with the 1032a's (room acoustics come also into play here). Very similar to 8040a.
G3b / 8030C: More focused compared to class AB versions, maybe slightly more prominent midrange, but only so. Maybe a tiny hint more richness (Still wouln't describe them as rich sounding). I like the frequency balance, but dislike the class D byproducts: grainy treble, some digititus. Didn't really like these in the end, but couldn't go back to 8030b's either because I got used to the improved technicalities. Now I am a headphone guy...

In some ways, the 8361's are a like a mixture of the best aspects of 8030b's and G3b's. Very little to none of that 'uneasiness' of previous SAM models or class D amps. Think them as 8030b's/8040a fed by a very high end DS converter, but with more clear/focused sound and a smidgen more midrange. Treble will sound more hard hitting, but still not fucked up. Its hard to evaluate the bass, since there was a subwoofer in the setup (Maybe in the future I'll try to listen to them without it). In my exprerience adding a subwoofer in the mixture, in a normal room, makes the bottom end sound more loose, even if the subwoofer's room response has been calibrated flat. I didn't find it lacking or dragging, but they'll still sound slightly different without the subwoofer, I think.

 

so what do you think about sonarworks after a few weeks?

do you prefer with or without correction?

 

interesting.

i've used 8030C previously and want to like them because of Genelec's constant innovation and supposedly environmental friendliness.

but in the end, the 8030C is just too sharp on the treble and makes certain youtube vids unwatchable. even when listening to music, my then girlfriend always ask me to lower the volume on the 8030C as it is 'very noisy'. I think its mainly because the treble and lean sounding sound bothering her.

it seems to me that 8361 just sounds like a slight improvement on everything 8030C is, which definitely isn't enough for me.

but 3-way with the size of 8361 or 8331, that's crazy.