volume control setting - Forum

Unofficially, I would say your ear will tell.

Hello,

Thanks for your post and for purchasing our 8020B monitors. Glad to hear they work well in your environment.

Regarding your comments about lisping voices, here are some thoughts. Overly bright voices can be heard if the room is too reverberant at high frequencies - i.e. you have a lot of windows, or glass furniture for example. If that is the case, some changes in the room decoration (added curtains, thick carpet, etc) could help you to achieve more natural sound reproduction for voices. The other aspect is that the recordings you are listening to may have been recorded and mixed originally with too bright voices - an innacuracy done at mix down by the mix engineer.

Concerning the 'veil' over the midrange, this is a very typical comment (and a real subjective impression you have) when the low frequency response of the monitor is not flat at the listening position. Meaning that the monitors are not correctly calibrated to reproduce a flat response. Because of the human ear/brain 'Masking Effect', if the level of the LF response is too high compared to the midrange response, this so called masking phenomena occurs, which shadows the midrange bandwidth. Typically the left hand of the acoustic piano becomes blurred, undefined, out of focus, etc. The cure is to calibrate the monitors (see our Operating manual and the Quick Setup Guide) in the LF, so that the response stays smooth and flat in your listening position. You will immediately notice a clear change in the midrange reproduction accuracy.

For the level matching issue you mention, the volume control linearity and noise floor of your source(s) are the key parameters. In any case, to minimize the audible noise floor from your source(s) it is wise to set the monitors to their full maximum output level and then match the preamplifier and source(s) levels accordingly.

Hope it is clear and helpful.
Best regards,

Hi

Christophe, thanks for your comments, very informative. I will do some exerimenting with roll of settings.
Another question, about the power switch. Can I leave it on for extended periods or should I switch off for holidays, vacations, etc. My concern is not with power consumption but with electronics deteriation.

Best Regards

As a new owner of 8020Bs I sensed some sharpness, too. Now, I am just about done with positioning. I have them left and right of a 37" TV on the cabinet edges, below ear height. Initially, next to the TV with about 10cm of shelf in front, they sounded unclear. Easy fix: a thick felt pad made it better. Moved forward to the edge and toed in to the listener position, a bit better. Aimed the acoustic axis (shown in the manual) upwards to my ear height at sitting position, much better. No more lispiness.

Re power: I always switch off the whole set-up with a central disconnector switch, just in case an overvoltage spike or nearby lightning strike finds its way to my power outlets. Standby consumption does add up as well. 8760 hours times 10VA is about 88kWh a year for two speakers, adding to your electricity bill and warming the room.

A 1990 video recorder left on standby (15W) for 10 years would consume so much electricity that in Japan (22 yen per kWh) you could buy a new DVD recorder (29000 yen) just from the savings with that disconnect switch.

i have a brand new pair of genelec 8030as and a motu traveler mk3.the line level is +4db. i have the 8030 volumes up all the way, and am controlling the volume from the motu. I generally like the genelec volume knobs all the way up because its the only way i know they are set the same. It seemed to work well until while messing around with the muto software, i accidentally unchecked the "monitor" button on the main outputs. which essentially turned up the motus volume up all the way. They spiked so loud it hurt, and now im hesitant to keep it configured as such. it was for less than a second but im wondering, could this have damaged the speakers? and what is the preferred method of control?

Hi,

You don't need to worry about having damaged your speakers. All Genelec speaker have sophisticated overload protection circuits which will keep the components inside the speaker safe, even in these kind of situations.