Genelec is one of the oldest and has always been popular in delivering huge active studio monitors of fabulous perfection for clarity and diction. Forays are been made into home cinema or small studio-friendly areas over the past few years now and so far this array is its smallest.

The dinkiest satellite available is used by our test system. That is the 6010A and stumpy 5040A subwoofer. Though this Genelec package is used in a home cinema, its usage can be soon widely used in music business types familiar with the brand. The woofer is the hub. First an input has to be put via a 3.5mm tip-ring sleeve stereo jack and incase you want two-channel, then connect to the sats via a pair of phono cables. If 5.1 surround is required then you’ll need a six-way phono loom from your source to wherever you want to put the woofer. Finally plug in each of the five surround speakers with their own phonos and their own mains lead. This is compared with one phono lead for bass and the five speaker wires of a passive system. This solution seems to be tedious and also costly. Channels can be gouged out in your walls for wires to hide in. Satellites can be mounted on the funky wall brackets and plug them in to custom install style sockets if wanted. In the streamlined world of modern AV, the major issue is the wires needed here but one has always been there with the active speakers.

The benefit of active design is that the cabinets can be made smaller and also the clarity and efficiency is improved. But they lack level and depth as all its tonal accuracy the output is too weedy. The look of Genelec system is beautiful. But it is expensive even for a very small slice of AV. These boxes have monitoring accuracy.