Recording - March 2014 - 16

B Y PA U L V N U K J R .

based and portable desktop setups. Still missing in the Genelec line, however, was the area in between the two, the home-based or project studio.
No longer.
This month we take a look at the brand-new M030, a two-way active
monitor that, along with the larger M040, is part of the company's new
Music Creation or M series. As the name suggests, these are aimed
squarely at musicians and project studios. At $695 retail each, these
are also Genelec's most affordable studio monitors to date-in
essence, a real honest-to-gosh Genelec for everyone who figured they
could never afford a real honest-to-gosh Genelec.
Going green
The M series monitors are a green product, meaning eco-friendly-
the cabinets are actually a dark grey/black. Unlike the aluminum 8000
series or the high-end wood-based models, the M series is made of
NCE (Natural Composite Enclosure), a composition of approximately
50% wood pulp and approximately 50% rigid polymers. According to
Genelec, the wood pulp "has the right acoustical properties to reduce
vibrations and deliver exceptional sound quality." The cabinets are
injection-molded which, unlike traditional crafted wood cabinets,
allowed designer Harri Koskinen and Genelec's electro-acoustic engineering team to perfectly tailor the cabinet's shape both inside and out
for the best sonic performance.
Continuing the green theme, the M030s also incorporate Genelec's
Intelligent Signal Sensing (ISS) technology, essentially a sleep mode for
your speakers that powers them down when no signal is present, and
then gently wakes them up again when signal hits them. In this sleep
state the monitor only consumes 0.5 Watts of power. Even the packing
and packaging are made of 100% recycled materials!

Genelec M030 Monitors
Eco-friendly construction meets fantastic sound in this cutting-edge small monitor
Genelec has, for the past 35 years, been producing
some of the most respected studio monitors in the world
from its headquarters in Finland. Back when the company began, studio monitors were typically a custom affair,
built on a studio-by-studio basis, and Genelec was one
of the pioneers of mass-market models. You could say
that Genelec literally set the tone for what we now know
as the studio monitor sound, i.e. critical, unflattering
monitors purposely made for mixing.
I remember that when I was getting into the game about
15 years ago, common wisdom was that "a real studio"
was expected to have three things to be taken seriously:
a Neumann U87 or better, Pro Tools, and Genelec speakers. On a recent trip to New York, Editor Mike Metlay and
I visited a number of top-level recording studios, and
along with the platinum and gold records on their walls,
pretty much every studio had a pair of Genelecs of some
shape and size in one if not all of their rooms.
While most of the company's line is directed at pro facilities, with price tags to match, a few years back Genelec
created the 8000 series of ultra-compact, aluminumenclosed speakers as a quality alternative to computer16

RECORDING March 2014

Curves and feet (and hidden audio magic)
As you can see in the picture, the M030 makes good use of the injection molding process and is nicely contoured and curved, and not just for
looks. On traditional speakers the hard edges create secondary reflection
points that can cause sonic anomalies, problematic when mixing. The
M030 uses a Minimum Defraction Enclosure (MDE™) design, its pretty
curved edges eliminating this effect for a truer directed sound with a wide
sweet spot. Genelec has a great online animated video that illustrates this
effect and how MDE counters it, at genelec.com/products/8040b/ under
Documentation > Animations-note that the video applies to any 8000
Series or M Series model, and the principle is the same.
The M series also features a newly designed Directivity Controlled
Waveguide, the sculpted recessed area around the tweeter, again for
improved accuracy and imaging. Finally, at the bottom of the speakers you
will see what looks like integrated feet. More than just holding the speaker up,
each leg hides a bottom-firing bass port that is part of Genelec's new internal
patent-pending low-turbulence reflex port design, called a Laminar Integrated
Port or LIP™. (See the photo at right, a bottom view that shows the ports.)
Speakers and specs, inputs and controls
The M030 has a 5" woofer and a 3/4" tweeter (while the M040 has a 6.5"
woofer and 1" tweeter). These are driven by a pair of class D low-distortion

http://www.genelec.com/products/8040b/

Recording - March 2014

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