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.
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!