BUYERS' NOTES:
* price includes BOTH units (i.e. sold as speaker / monitor pair)
* honest seller here! happy to answer any questions re: these AMAZING studio monitors.

SUMMARY:
Collectively called ‘The Ones’, Genelec’s new additions create a trio of point-source, three-way monitors. Maintaining Genelec’s model-numbering conventions, the new mid-sized 8341A model has a 20-litre cabinet volume and is about the same size as the 8040A, while the smallest 8331A has a 12-litre cabinet and is a few millimetres taller than the 8030A. In fact, the 8331A holds the record as the world’s smallest three-way monitor.

With its unusually rounded, almost bulbous form, Genelec’s instantly recognisable cast-aluminium cabinet is the brainchild of a Finnish industrial designer called Harri Koskinen. But the project was about a lot more than just the visual aesthetics; it brought several important technical benefits, too. For a start, it heralded the integration of Genelec’s proprietary Directivity Control Waveguide (DCW), which shapes the baffle itself into optimised waveguides for the drivers. The rounded cabinet form also minimises edge-diffraction effects, a feature Genelec have christened the Minimum Diffraction Enclosure (MDE) concept. Moreover, the inherent strength of cast aluminium facilitates relatively thin cabinet wall thicknesses with little requirement for internal bracing, maximising the internal volume and minimising cabinet vibrations. Aluminium also provides excellent heat management for the electronics and drivers.

All of these benefits are present in the current 8000-series range of monitors, many of which also feature sophisticated DSP technology such as Genelec’s Loudspeaker Management (GLM) and Smart Active Monitor (SAM) systems, for remote control and automatic room-alignment EQ, respectively.

Overall, I found the 8341A and 8331A to be outstanding reference monitors, and I am completely bowled over that this level of sound quality can now be achieved from such compact boxes. Judged by their bass responses alone you’d be forgiven for thinking these were much, much larger than they actually are, and yet their stereo imaging has the precision normally associated with smaller designs. They also deliver the transparency and neutrality expected of a really good three-way monitor speaker, but their compact form allows them to be used in ultra-nearfield situations and in either orientation without compromising their tonal accuracy. In a good room, the GLM equalisation feature adds a welcome uniformity to the on-axis frequency response, while in a bad room, the ability to work very close allows most of the room effects to be beneficially negated.

There is nothing else on the market at all that comes anywhere close to matching the size/performance ratio, let alone the compact, three-way, point-source format.  For these reasons I think I’m entirely justified in suggesting that these new monitors are genuine game-changers, and that we are in ‘product of the decade’ territory here! Genelec have set a new — and very high — benchmark for compact reference monitors!