The Reviewer

The Genelec 6010A sells for about $350 per speaker—these are not cheap, and yet, they are the least expensive of the Genelec line. Genelec is known for making industry standard studio monitors, but the 6010A, with its compact 195 mm x 121 mm x 114 mm dimension looks more like computer (multimedia) speakers. Factor in the white color option and it looks like it was made to match even Macs. Note, these are not your average Logitech or Creative desktop speakers, but if you want to bring that hi-fi experience to that where you spend most of your time—your desk, then these speakers are worth considering.

Review below by Marshal M. Rosenthal

Rubber feet keep the pair of speakers steady on the desk, although I could have used the included wall bracket if I wanted to. Checking out the back finds slots for attaching a power cord and RCA cable from the PC’s line out, as well as a set of controls for adjustments based on the acoustics of where it’s placed. This is serious stuff—I mean, when was the last time you saw reference frequency response charts in a PC speaker manual?

Taking out the techno speak, bottom line is that they should be aimed so they converge at ear height and are at about the same distance from one to the other to you. Plan on spending some time adjusting their response using the controls on the back, because this is where it gets personal—zero them out and start with the manual-suggested settings. In my case, I ended up adjusting the “Level” trim to three-quarters full, and put the Desktop nub to OFF and the Bass Tilt at -6dB because the desk was so near the wall.

Of course all the tweaking in the world doesn’t prove anything—like most folks, I judge the quality of audio based on what it sounds like and not from some audio measuring meter. So I popped in the DVD of The Dark Knight and navigated to the scene where the Joker’s smoking the streets from a 16-wheeler. The strength of the sound was awesome—the bass was like a hammer as the helicopter smacked into the side of the office building and then crashed to the pavement. I also tried listening to the cars zooming around the tracks in Speed Racer—the speakers articulated details that frankly I hadn’t heard before when listening in my home theater.

And as expected after that, playing the CD of Telarc’s Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition, Night On Bald Mountain, Prelude To Khovanshchina (Paavo Järvi & Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra) sounded as good as I could have hoped for; delicate passages came through without incident and nothing was being overwhelmed by the bass. There’s plenty of power, forget about what the specs say, but more importantly these little guys put out a real depth and an impressive soundstage that is dead clean. I even tried playing some B-52’s off of my iPod and for damn sure this is how you want to be listening to techno-beats! So yeh, I guess it’s fair to say that the cast-aluminum enclosure, optimization of the air flow, active crossover filters, automatic protective circuitry and other enhancements all add up to this not being your usual plastic squeaky PC speaker. And at nearly $400, that’s only right. Also, I’d agree that the 6010A could be considered “portable”, but in that case I’d want to have the white, not black finish.

Genelec includes pretty much all the cables you’ll need, and for once a quick start up guide really does just that – although tweaker-heads won’t feel left out. At the end of the day, these speakers are overkill for those who only use their computers for serious office stuff, but if your PC is GHQ for gaming, listening to music and operating in general as your secondary home theater, then boy does Genelec have a loudspeaker for you.

Notes

The 6010A is available in black, white and silver. The 5040A active subwoofer was made to match the 6010A.

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