Genelec & Studio Monitor 1092A powered subwoofer

 

Genelec Studio Monitor 1031A loudspeaker & Studio Monitor 1092A powered subwoofer

Description

Genelec Studio Monitor 1031A amplifier and Studio Monitor 1092A controlled subwoofer. Which amplifiers do sound experts pay attention to? What's more for what reason would it be a good idea for us to mind? All things considered, maybe recording engineers are the sort of refined, touchy, music-adoring sorts who read Stereophile. However much they might cherish music, numerous sound stars show up just to see the first hints of instruments as natural substances to be inventively reshaped and controlled. (OK, there are special cases. Be that as it may, recordists who care about the hints of genuine instruments typically record them in genuine acoustic spaces rather than in studios, and use as minimal sign handling as they can pull off.) This doesn't imply that recording engineers are unaware of the nature of their screen frameworks. On the contrary, they request the most noteworthy conceivable nature of them—not on the grounds that they esteem the genuine hints of instruments, but since they need to hear precisely the thing they're doing to those sounds. They need to hear what the recording seems like, paying little heed to how high its constancy to any real acoustic occasion. Assuming you ask, they'll let you know they need "exactness." Obviously, audiophiles and individuals who plan our amplifiers likewise salaam before the special stepped area of precision, however our meaning of it is very unique. The audiophile's fantasy is to observe a framework that makes all accounts sound like his idea of genuine, unrecorded music—whatever that might be. Numerous audiophiles hear unrecorded music so seldom that their thoughts regarding imitated sound are unusual, however even the individuals who go to shows as often as possible and need to hear that sound at home might struggle making a decision about authenticity since they can't do coordinate correlations. To bring the genuine article from the show lobby to the lounge, they should depend on the ideas of aural memory. The recording engineer has a lot simpler season of it: in a studio, genuine, live instrumental sounds are regularly an entryway away from the control room's screens. To this end the crude sound in a recording studio—the purported console feed, before the equalizers and fuzzboxes and other sign processors that designers live by—will in general be considerably more practical than that in most audiophile listening rooms. These things were gotten back to me for the nth time at a new computerized frameworks shootout at Colorado Sound, a Denver recording studio. I got an opportunity to think about Colorado Sound's arrangement of Genelec Studio Monitors with the genuine instruments playing in the following room. I was adequately dazzled to request of John Atkinson for a special case for Stereophile's survey strategy of "no professional hardware." Genelec was enchanted to credit us a couple of Model 1031As (reference 1), and a matching subwoofer. In any case, despite the fact that most recording studios actually record in two channels (similarly as most Stereophile perusers actually tune in surround sound), what Genelec truly needed me to survey was their home-theater encompass sound framework. They demanded sending me a total 5.1-channel framework with two subwoofers (which I'll audit momentarily as an addendum). An inside and out audit of the multichannel manifestation of this framework shows up in the July/August 1999 issue of Stereophile Guide to Home Theater. Portrayal

All Genelec amplifiers are dynamic plans—ie, fueled by their own power intensifiers. This ought to, in principle, give preferable execution and higher dependability over is conceivable by blending and matching irrelevant amps and speakers. I will not emphasize the reiteration of justifications for why they ought to, in light of the fact that they've been examined in pretty much every survey of controlled speakers we've at any point distributed. I burned through the vast majority of my sound years deploring the way that the best imaging is normally acquired when the upper-range speakers are put evenly concerning the side dividers, while evenly positioned woofers have about the most unpredictable reaction it's feasible to get. In any case, sound idealists will more often than not be an unreasonable part; our fear of compromised time-arrangement drove us to demand for a really long time that everything be in one box, regardless of whether doing as such compromised recurrence reaction. Multichannel home venue broke the across the board box custom—not on the grounds that different woofers convey better solid, but since five satellites and one subwoofer occupy significantly less space than five full-range walled in areas. I most definitely, am enchanted. Numerous audiophiles demand that bass is directional in light of the fact that they can perceive where bass instruments are found, yet I've happily embarrassed enough of them to realize that they're completely off-base with regards to this. Under a specific recurrence, generally refered to as 200Hz, our capacity to confine sounds lessens until—at around 80Hz—it is, in every practical sense, gone. We find the heading of bass instruments by their hints, not their bass substance. There are likewise the individuals who guarantee that sound system bass sounds more extravagant and more regular than mono bass, yet once more, the sound system advantage lessens with recurrence. (What's more numerous CDs from LP firsts have just mono bass on them in any case, since vinyl couldn't deal with sound system bass.)

The Genelec 1031A Studio Monitor is a so-called nearfield monitor (footnote 2). This means simply that it's designed to be listened to from up close, which is how I first heard a pair of them—from a distance of a little more than 30". (They were on stands right behind the mixing console's meter bridge—the superstructure at the back where the volume indicators are mounted.) Nearfield monitors are designed to have a slightly depressed midrange, to make them sound farther away than they really are, and are not intended to be listened to from 7' or 8' away. They have nonetheless gained immense popularity among high-end audiophiles because their laid-back midrange enhances the depth and spaciousness of the stereo soundstage. The 1031A's 8" polypropylene-cone driver is housed in a 15-liter (0.5 cubic foot) reflex enclosure, and the entire amplifier of each speaker is attached to the inside of the enclosure's back panel. The panel is hinged to provide easy access to the electronics for quick repairs, and shock-mounted to prevent rattles. The system's –—dB point is 47Hz and its low end is 6dB down at 43Hz. The tweeter is a 1" metal-dome unit with claimed "pure piston behavior up to 23kHz." Crossovers are parallel bandpass filters, giving 24dB/octave of acoustical slope. The 1031A's crossover is at 2.2kHz, and its bass and treble amps are capable of 120W peak output each. The 1031A is rated at 120dB SPL of output at 1m, and its sensitivity-control default is fully clockwise, which gives 100dB SPL at 1m with 400mV input level. (In order to get the speaker's claimed 110dB output, the input level must be at least 1.23V.) Genelec's audio connectors are balanced XLRs, but even with an unbalanced input, the speakers have more than enough gain to allow any surround processor or modern active preamp to drive the speakers to overload. The 1031A has three DIP switches—treble level, bass level, and bass rolloff—for tailoring the frequency response. The treble control hinges at 3kHz and adjusts the 10kHz level from +2 to –4dB (relative to nominally flat?); the bass level hinges at 400Hz, adjusting 40Hz from 0 to –6dB; and bass rolloff hinges at 100Hz and adjusts 40Hz from 0 to –8dB. The adjustment steps are all 2dB, which is coarse but a lot better than no adjustments at all. They provide a bewilderingly wide range of settings, but Genelec helpfully supplies initial-setup guidelines based on room conditions and speaker placement. The 1092A subwoofer has three adjustments: input level, bass rolloff hinged at 50Hz (adjusting from 0 to +6dB at 30Hz), and a phase control that adjusts from 0 to –270° at 85Hz in 90° steps. It also includes three 85Hz, 24dB/octave active crossover networks for the upper-range speakers, with balanced input and output connectors for them. The 1031A uses Genelec's Directivity Control Waveguide to match the tweeter's horizontal dispersion to that of the woofer, for maximally smooth off-axis response. The tweeter frame is square so that it can be rotated in 90° increments, and the 1031A is supplied configured for vertical orientation, at which time the Genelec logo is at the lower left corner of the tweeter. Each 1031A has a front-panel LED that shows green when the unit is powered up, red when it's overloaded or in overload-protection shutdown. The 1092A subwoofer has the same lights but, inexplicably, they're on the rear panel—you have to peer behind them to see what's going on. Duh.

Setup

Genelec's systems can be configured for use with any source, from a simple stereo preamplifier to a sophisticated Dolby Digital/DTS surround processor. I tried them both ways—as a stereo system using the subwoofers' built-in crossovers, and as a 4- and 5-channel music-surround system using the crossovers in my Lexicon DC-1 surround processor