Little more than three years ago I purchased a pair of Genelec The Ones series. I couldn’t have been more happy. So wrote a couple posts on the topic at the time:
After enjoying that state for a while I decided that my main focus was on the movies instead of music. So I had a target and this post describes decisions made and the evolutions of my setup until now.
Initial setup
Initially I started with
I still consider Genelec 8351A as beautiful and excellent sounding engineering master piece. In the end it was both too big and too expensive considering extension to multichannel home theater setup.
Yamaha WXC-50 was my first preamp. It was reasonably priced and compact. Digital output was exiting addon and player functionalities (Spotify Connect) were great. But then, it was a stereo device.
5.1 setup
So, I decided to sell the first setup to be able to get 5.1. That was built using following components:
- 4* Genelec 8330 (FL,FR,RL,RR)
- 1* Genelec 8320 (C)
- 1* Genelec 7360 (SW)
- Canton Smart Connect 5.1
Moving to smaller 2-way models from the 8351A was a bit sad. Luckily these sound great as well and together with a subwoofer they fit my home theater great!
Canton Smart Connect 5.1 was quite similar to the earlier Yamaha. Reasonably priced and compact. It had also nice players (Spotify) and nice eArc based control from TV. It is actually also Dolby Atmos enabled device, but it has physical outputs only for a 5.1 setup. Adding more channels would have required using Smart Connect series speakers. I didn’t find good information on using those as Atmos speakers and I also didn’t find suitable models for my setup. I also wanted to stay with full GLM setup, so mixing other speakers was not an option.
The deal breaker with Canton was it’s problems staying in sync with HDMI signal. Occasionally it lost the signal and it took couple of seconds to find it again. Canton needed to go away.
5.1.2 Setup
My current setup is:
- 6* Genelec 8330 (FL,C,FR,RL,RR, LTF)
- 1* Genelec 8320 (RTF, to be replaced with 8330?)
- 1* Genelec 7360 (SW)
- ToneWinner AT-300
So I wanted to experience Dolby Atmos and get rid of the HDMI issues. AV preamps with Atmos support and XLR outputs tend to be much more expensive than my previous preamps described above. ToneWinner is again some kind of a compromise. It is also much more expensive but still much less than some alternatives. At first I was tempted to buy NAD M17 V2i as used. As new it is almost 6 times more expensive than ToneWinner. I was about to pay roughly half of that used. That was until at very last point I understood that I was about to be scammed. That changed my decision to go with a new AT-300 from a dealer with warranty. No regrets on that decision!
As said AT-300 has XLR outputs and support for Dolby Atmos with more channels that I can even dream about. Compared to the Canton I used before, it also has dual HDMI outputs that enables me to connect both TV and projector at the same time (Please note that, at least for me, having both outputs active causes problems, if either of the devices is powered off. Changing output with a remote is good enough for me and it works.). The biggest compromises are on the room calibration (that is not any kind of issue while using Genelec GLM) and lack of Spotify connect etc.
I’m still wondering if I will use Genelec 8320 or 8330 for Atmos channels. Ending up with either means I will change one. I installed current top channels to “front” location with a plan to install back ones later. Once again I’m enjoying my current setup and in the same time already wanting for more!
Short note also on the sources. My primary source is Playstation 5. Disney+ has some content with Dolby Atmos and it works great! On the other hand, what came as a surprise for me, is that Netflix doesn’t support Atmos on the PS5 (at least for now). I have also computer in the setup (primarily for GLM) and Netflix on Windows does support Dolby Atmos. I’m currently having some glitches with the audio at random intervals playing from that PC, but hopefully I will find a solution to that one.
Anyways, now its time to enjoy for the immersive audio experience!
Just because I/1 can 