Planning a new desktop 2.1 setup, and there are 2 routes I’m considering and i thought it would make a good discussion.
The first is to get a pair of good monitors, like the genelec 8330a with a genelec SAM sub. Use an interface like the topping u9 to keep everything digital, and also get a stack to power headphones.
The second route is to get a dac/headphone amp/discrete power amp stack and get a pair of speakers, like the ls50 meta/r3 and some decent sub (would a topping LA90 discrete power these?)
With the first route, you get accurate monitors with built in room correction. But many people don’t like monitors for casual listening, and you are kind of locked into that ecosystem.
The second route gives more flexibility to change or upgrade later, and a sound signature many people seem to like. But you lose the easy built in room correction and easy integration some monitor ecosystems have.
What route would you go with and why?
I’ve used 8330A+7350A with GLM. The setup is good for flat response, for getting an easy to setup room correction, and perfect sub integration with mains, and it is relatively cheap system in total, considering what all you get. I think it is a winner.
However, I ended up selling the setup with preference for bigger monitors with larger drivers and no sub. I’m now using 2x 1032C in my living room which comes with 10" woofers and which I found used in a local audio shop, so not much price difference compared to brand new 8330A pair and 7350A, actually. I decided I wanted two sources of bass in the room to get room modes better under control, as singular sub didn’t seem to work ideally in any location that was practical in my living room. I also tended to pull the subwoofer’s level up by some 3 dB above calibrated level to make the bass sound more natural, as flat response is slightly thin-sounding unless you listen at reference levels where ear’s bass behavior is roughly flat also. I think Genelec’s Sound Character Profiler technology does not apply the frequency response correction curve to the sub, only to the main monitors, and this was annoying because it meant that I couldn’t adjust the response correctly from a single UI, but would have to combine the SCP filters with a manual level adjustment of the sub.
I do not see anything wrong with monitors for casual listening. Genelec speakers are highly accurate, and the DSP is good, and you can adjust the character of your sound output straight into the speakers, like dial in some few dB worth of bass boost, which I like to do. The bass boost, even if it is only a few dB, is a huge deal in making the sound wonderfully warm and powerful. These are flexible monitors that are surprisingly small thanks to the metal enclosure, have wide dispersion angle, low enough harmonic distortion to be essentially perfect if sub is crossed over at around 100 Hz, and you also get basically flat group delay so that all frequencies hit the listener simultaneously. The combination makes for accurate, revealing sound which is really unlike anything I heard before. The only limiting factor in performance is likely to be your room, so budget for panels, you will want them once you see the GRADE reports from GLM.