I have been on a whirlwind tour around the world launching the Genesis 2.2 Junior (G2Jr) over the past few months - first in January in Las Vegas during CES, and then in April in New York at the New York Audio Show, and in Malaysia in May with our distributor RAVE Systems. Next, we will be in Tokyo in June.... and there will be several more countries to be announced.
I was asked by several Genesis owners why I waited to 2 years after the initial launch of the Junior before doing this..... Well, Junior's had a long journey.
We have to start with the origins of this design - and it goes back to the original Genesis II.5 designed by Arnie Nudell, and even further back to Infinity IRS Gamma introduced in 1987. Just in the Genesis range, the DNA of the G2Jr comes from:
1) Genesis II.5 - released in 1994, it had 4 tweeters (3 front 1 rear), a 48-inch midrange ribbon and one 12-inch servo-controlled woofer and one 12-inch slave
2) Genesis 300 - released in 1997, with 4 tweeters (3 front 1 rear), a 48-inch midrange ribbon and two 8-inch servo-controlled woofers and four 8-inch slaves
3) Genesis 350 - released in 1999, with 4 tweeters (3 front 1 rear), a 48-inch midrange ribbon and two 8-inch servo-controlled woofers and two 8-inch slaves
4) Genesis 350SE - released in 2000, with 15 tweeters (12 front 3 rear), a 48-inch midrange ribbon and two 8-inch servo-controlled woofers and two 8-inch slaves
Released in 2011 and re-launched in 2013, the Genesis 2.2 Junior has 15 tweeters (12 front 3 rear), a 48-inch midrange ribbon and two 12-inch servo-controlled woofers.
Despite the popularity of the G350SE (and the previous generations), it took almost 10 years to deliver a follow-up, and there were many questions why. A couple of customers even went from the G350SE to the G5.3 (a much smaller speaker) and thought it was an upgrade. So the G2Jr was much anticipated. The design process was a journey and a story.
I had never been happy with the G-II.5, G300 or G350. There was both a tonal as well as rhythmic incoherence. And looking at the technology, it was easy to see why. The midrange was a line-source, and the high-frequencies was a point source. With a line-source, spl drops at 3dB per doubling of distance. With a point-source, spl drops at 6dB with every doubling of distance. This meant that if the midrange and tweeter was balanced at 1m, then at 2m the tweeter would be 3dB lower than the midrange, and at 4m the tweeter would be 6dB lower than the midrange. There would have been only one distance from the speaker where it would be balanced. The bass level is much easier to control since the servo-bass amplifier had adjustable bass gain - but again, with the bass being a point-source, change listening distance and the tonal balance again goes out of whack.
The G350SE was better as it has a line array of tweeters, and a line-source midrange ribbon, but still a challenge to set-up. It also lobed horizontally, so moving my head from side to side, I could hear the sound change.
Enter G2Jr. With the bigger brother the Genesis 2.2 four-tower version done, it would been easy to "down-size" the design, right? Noooo.........
Theoretically, the problem was to integrate the line-source midrange/tweeter with a point-source bass. However, the bass being on the floor, boundary effects turned it into more of a "doughnut source". The ripples of the soundwave across the floor caused significant coherence problems. Moreover, having the woofers hitched up to the midrange/tweeter wings caused problems with imaging and soundstage whenever there was significant amounts of bass. The pressure wave of the bass also caused problems with the light and delicate midrange ribbon.
It took a while, a lot of thinking and modelling, and building of prototypes, but much of these problems were solved over a couple of years. The solution, side firing woofers perpendicular to the midrange ribbons fixed a lot of the issues. Since we were talking about wavelengths much greater than the distance between the two woofers, the two woofers acted like a pseudo-single-source. The floor boundary issues were solved, and finally we were close enough that we showed a prototype at CES2011 that sounded pretty good.
However, pretty good wasn't good enough. As we started playing them in different rooms and in different systems, we started identifying potential areas of improvement. Along the way, I had re-designed the Genesis tweeter and this was released towards the end of 2011. Using this tweeter in Junior necessitated an improvement in the crossover, and this also resulted in improvements in the midrange. With improvements in the midrange, the bass needed to catch-up which resulted in enhancements to the power supply and servo-control. As these speakers would be used in smaller rooms, room loading and reflections necessitated independent control of each of the two 12-inch woofers.
To reduce any vibration in the 'wings' holding the midrange/tweeters, the woofer box was given its own suspension system - which required a revision to the suspension system of the whole speaker. The type of acrylic used and precision level of machining went through various upgrades and revisions as well.
With such huge substantial improvements, we decided to re-launch Junior at CES2013. However, since the configuration had essentially remained the same, we did not feel that it merited an increased version number.
The results, though, speak for themselves. Even if I do say so myself, coherence is quite exceptional. Even in a large room, the high-frequencies, midrange and bass are seamless. Bass control even in a small room is phenomenal - almost as if the speaker controlled the room instead of the other way around. The sweet-spot is huge, essentially covering the whole room. And most important to me, Junior is totally relaxed and effortless playing any and all kinds of music - from Frankie goes to Hollywood, to Holst: The Planets, to Holly Cole.
Don't just take my word for it - here are some snippets from various listeners at the past three launches:
Malaysia: http://notanotherhifiblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/post-launch-report-relax-yet.html
New York: http://www.stereophile.com/content/genesis-advances-technologies
Las Vegas: http://parttimeaudiophile.com/2013/01/19/ces-2013-yes-the-genesis-g2jr-will-fit-through-your-door/
I was asked by several Genesis owners why I waited to 2 years after the initial launch of the Junior before doing this..... Well, Junior's had a long journey.
We have to start with the origins of this design - and it goes back to the original Genesis II.5 designed by Arnie Nudell, and even further back to Infinity IRS Gamma introduced in 1987. Just in the Genesis range, the DNA of the G2Jr comes from:
1) Genesis II.5 - released in 1994, it had 4 tweeters (3 front 1 rear), a 48-inch midrange ribbon and one 12-inch servo-controlled woofer and one 12-inch slave
2) Genesis 300 - released in 1997, with 4 tweeters (3 front 1 rear), a 48-inch midrange ribbon and two 8-inch servo-controlled woofers and four 8-inch slaves
3) Genesis 350 - released in 1999, with 4 tweeters (3 front 1 rear), a 48-inch midrange ribbon and two 8-inch servo-controlled woofers and two 8-inch slaves
4) Genesis 350SE - released in 2000, with 15 tweeters (12 front 3 rear), a 48-inch midrange ribbon and two 8-inch servo-controlled woofers and two 8-inch slaves
Released in 2011 and re-launched in 2013, the Genesis 2.2 Junior has 15 tweeters (12 front 3 rear), a 48-inch midrange ribbon and two 12-inch servo-controlled woofers.
Despite the popularity of the G350SE (and the previous generations), it took almost 10 years to deliver a follow-up, and there were many questions why. A couple of customers even went from the G350SE to the G5.3 (a much smaller speaker) and thought it was an upgrade. So the G2Jr was much anticipated. The design process was a journey and a story.
I had never been happy with the G-II.5, G300 or G350. There was both a tonal as well as rhythmic incoherence. And looking at the technology, it was easy to see why. The midrange was a line-source, and the high-frequencies was a point source. With a line-source, spl drops at 3dB per doubling of distance. With a point-source, spl drops at 6dB with every doubling of distance. This meant that if the midrange and tweeter was balanced at 1m, then at 2m the tweeter would be 3dB lower than the midrange, and at 4m the tweeter would be 6dB lower than the midrange. There would have been only one distance from the speaker where it would be balanced. The bass level is much easier to control since the servo-bass amplifier had adjustable bass gain - but again, with the bass being a point-source, change listening distance and the tonal balance again goes out of whack.
The G350SE was better as it has a line array of tweeters, and a line-source midrange ribbon, but still a challenge to set-up. It also lobed horizontally, so moving my head from side to side, I could hear the sound change.
Enter G2Jr. With the bigger brother the Genesis 2.2 four-tower version done, it would been easy to "down-size" the design, right? Noooo.........
Theoretically, the problem was to integrate the line-source midrange/tweeter with a point-source bass. However, the bass being on the floor, boundary effects turned it into more of a "doughnut source". The ripples of the soundwave across the floor caused significant coherence problems. Moreover, having the woofers hitched up to the midrange/tweeter wings caused problems with imaging and soundstage whenever there was significant amounts of bass. The pressure wave of the bass also caused problems with the light and delicate midrange ribbon.
It took a while, a lot of thinking and modelling, and building of prototypes, but much of these problems were solved over a couple of years. The solution, side firing woofers perpendicular to the midrange ribbons fixed a lot of the issues. Since we were talking about wavelengths much greater than the distance between the two woofers, the two woofers acted like a pseudo-single-source. The floor boundary issues were solved, and finally we were close enough that we showed a prototype at CES2011 that sounded pretty good.
However, pretty good wasn't good enough. As we started playing them in different rooms and in different systems, we started identifying potential areas of improvement. Along the way, I had re-designed the Genesis tweeter and this was released towards the end of 2011. Using this tweeter in Junior necessitated an improvement in the crossover, and this also resulted in improvements in the midrange. With improvements in the midrange, the bass needed to catch-up which resulted in enhancements to the power supply and servo-control. As these speakers would be used in smaller rooms, room loading and reflections necessitated independent control of each of the two 12-inch woofers.
To reduce any vibration in the 'wings' holding the midrange/tweeters, the woofer box was given its own suspension system - which required a revision to the suspension system of the whole speaker. The type of acrylic used and precision level of machining went through various upgrades and revisions as well.
With such huge substantial improvements, we decided to re-launch Junior at CES2013. However, since the configuration had essentially remained the same, we did not feel that it merited an increased version number.
The results, though, speak for themselves. Even if I do say so myself, coherence is quite exceptional. Even in a large room, the high-frequencies, midrange and bass are seamless. Bass control even in a small room is phenomenal - almost as if the speaker controlled the room instead of the other way around. The sweet-spot is huge, essentially covering the whole room. And most important to me, Junior is totally relaxed and effortless playing any and all kinds of music - from Frankie goes to Hollywood, to Holst: The Planets, to Holly Cole.
Don't just take my word for it - here are some snippets from various listeners at the past three launches:
Malaysia: http://notanotherhifiblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/post-launch-report-relax-yet.html
New York: http://www.stereophile.com/content/genesis-advances-technologies
Las Vegas: http://parttimeaudiophile.com/2013/01/19/ces-2013-yes-the-genesis-g2jr-will-fit-through-your-door/
