Nearfields for audiophile listening?

To me the 8040B sounds like shit. One note bass with a treble that tries to decapitate you while you search for the midrange. It's the Beyerdynamic of the monitor world.

 

That’s Genelec!

 

Yeah man, one of my bass test discs gave me headache on these(Atoms for peace). The home demo lasted 2 days before i returned them but it was nope nope nope after a couple of minutes really. Put the treble at lowest setting, played with placement and toe in but nope nope nope again.

 

The worst is Focal though. Listening to Focals:

 

Haha yep. Woofer on the Solo6 was good no issue's, then came the crossover(ugh) and then the tweeter(pinhead). I knew a lot less about speakers back then though. Ah well lesson learned.

 

The focal solo6's tweeter is perfectly fine for me though. non fatiguing whatsoever. if anything, it may be a little mellow like how dynaudios are.

even the alpha that I've tried for 10 mins didn't have any problem with the tweeter.

Have you all tried PSI? very big sounding though a little on the bright side as well

 

Maybe you’re invulnerable to metal tweeters! Could try the Aps Klasik or the Pelonis or something crazy then.

PSIs were great when I heard them briefly but was more compressed than any time I’ve heard ATC and Quested. It had the ATC like hyper clarity but a more normal, flatter tone in the smaller monitors Ive heard from both British brands. Quested below 8” is no bass and ATC below the SCM50 was anorexic. I suspect the woofers and amps aren’t as high quality in the PSI. Their amps are custom class g or h or something weird versus the ultra beefy class ab amps in Quested and ATC. Those two really mean their wattages are their clean, real world wattages unless all class Dick and 99.9 % of audiophile power amps.

Have you heard Geithain? I really want to try their physically cardioid bass ones but they’re not distributed at all in the US.

 

Agree on the bass part of the Quested, it rolls off pretty sharply around 60hz on my S7R's. I have my two 10" subs crossed over at 100hz and it's very good now. I sit about 170cm from them so technically still nearfield i guess.
Meg's are really expensive but i'm also curious.

 

It sounds like your room might have had active modes just where Quested rolled off.
I have not heard Quested, but I believe the higher tuned woofer arrangement can be with
better clarity and mid-high bass slam, more lively.
Genelecs attempt to go real low in a tiny enclosure with electro-eq rape applied to woofers,
that despite to fulfill this prophecy need lots of linear travel, also have to play considerable amount of midrange.
All this means the bass feels more sluggish, slow, and smeared (mids and highs play a role on how bass instruments feel) than with an arrangement of higher bass tuning.

I maintain that the bass is fine when set up right in a big enough room,
especially considering monitoring without subs. It's a compromise and there is no universal winner in apples to apples setup.
The most annoying to my ears is the scooped high mids/low treble.

 

Do they apply Linkwitz Transform? The extension they get for me looks doable with low Fs drivers and clever porting. Their cast alu enclosures also get extra volume, compared to mdf.

 

Well in all fairness i was still learning the room back then and i had no treatments yet. It was mainly the metal tweeter that was the big offender and that is hard to fix. If that wasn't an issue i might have put in more effort to try and fix the rest.

My room is a bit weird though. It's 349x590x250cm with an opening into a hallway. I guess that works a bit like a basstrap. Right now with treatment and dsp for xover and dirac i get pretty much a smooth response down to 25hz ish.

If i knew then what i know now about my room and acoustics in general i could make them work better but still that pesky tweeter.

 

that’s what quested and atc appear to be doing. The Hans Zimmer V2108 and passive vh108 get extension through the huge cabinet size and special volt woofer. The smaller H108 was noticeably more detailed in mids than the older active vs2108 though but the H108 is a little too ns10, old monitor style sounding for me.

Yeah that typical ported nearfield sound mostly doesn’t work at all. The ones that work well with it seem to be anomalies. The JBL 305, HS8, A7X, some of the KRK V6, the original BM6a, Proac 100 all work but the other sizes from those brands are mostly awful to work on.

the upper mids and low treble are truly a black hole on a lot of two ways. I truly despise critical listening or working on the JBL 306 & 308, newer Mackies, Dyn BM15, Genelec 1031a and 1032a. It’s not just recessed but reactive; it’s lofi.

 

It's only slightly different with correction. I guess it's slightly more revealing with correction than without.

That said, so much of my usage is with a guitar sim, it doesn't get turned on too often (even zero latency adds some delay).

 

@Luckbad Well, if there's a way to transfer your license to me, I'll buy it

 

Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Never owned any, but they were once an ambition.

One big regret... I didn't take up a boxed-since-new earlier-generation at-a-great-price offer. They would even have been inspected by the local-country agent. Some say that the early Genelecs were best.

 

Yeah i heard the same. Ah well listen for yourself if you're interested, don't listen to random people on the internet.

 

Due to hearing loss, my days of investing substantial sums in audio are over. The HD800 was the last thing: suits my ears perfectly!

 

Funny thing is, when I first know about this thread, the early pages are mostly praising genelec as the best nearfield monitors.

Anyway, a used special 40 pop up at my local forum. I went to demo special 40 again for the 4th time wanting very much to like them and buy them. But they are really underwhelming. Like all dynaudio I've tried. Anyone here like dynaudio?

 

I find the BM6 mk III to be pretty okay. But I do also like Genelec, so ymmv.

 

Dynaudio is not the same company that it was 25 years ago. They used to be a driver OEM making warm but decent hifi speakers and some good monitors. Now after a few sales, they only make their own speakers. They probably make better than ever drivers but they are only in the newer Dynaudio speakers, which are hideously overpriced and way underperforming for what you pay. They do not seem to be particularly great at designing speakers. This is said given that their most notable monitors (the original M and BM series of which only the actives are still sold) were designed back in the 90s by a third party, Andy Munroe, and all of the revisions of the BM6a by the company themselves were not as good and the Lyds were not as good. I was only impressed by the BM6a. Munroe and John Dunlavy used to build mains loudspeakers with Dynaudio drivers too. The hifi stuff mostly can’t match the monitors when used as nearfields. Different design goals. The monitors are still decent (the BM6a is very good) and their hifi speakers are still okay if a bit too warm with a crossover scoop somewhere in everything with a normal crossover. The 4-5khz something crossover in the Lyds and some of the newer hifi speakers is truly WTF