I have just bought a pair of Genelec 1030A's for my home studio. I write music for the theatre and was looking to upgrade my speakers - the only part of my kit that was letting the sound down. I was looking for something which, at a reasonable price, simply produced sound as it had been recorded. In my price range (1,200 GBP) I soon narrowed the choice to the Mackie HR824's and the Genelec's. I spent 6 hours in a professional studio comparing the sound and eventually settled on the Genelec's. The Mackie's are proported to be extremely flat in response but my immediate reaction was to reach for the EQ and tweek up the treble - maybe a little too flat even for mastering music. However, the bass response was incredible with the most amazingly tight sub-bass. In comparison, the Genelec's are very light on bass response, only going down to around 50Hz at -3dB. The thing that swayed me was simply the clarity of the Genelec's. You can hear music in the most incredible detail. As one of the other reviewers has said, the downside is that they highlight poorly mastered recordings. Voices are crystal clear, strings and guitars are stunning, the stereo imaging is superb and you really get the feeling that the artists are in the room with you. On the down side, they are very sensitive to axis meaning that the high end response fades as you move off the recommended listening position (this sensitivity is probably what gives them their clarity - see the Genelec home page for a description of the DCW technology which does this). Would I recommend them to others? Absolutely but I'm now saving up for the sub-woofer to recover some of the deep bass found with the Mackie's. This is particularly important for me since theatres tend to have a very good bass response and I need to be able to recreate this in my studio. They drop a rating point for me because of the bass response but then they are quite a small speaker (why is just about everything on this web site a 4 or 5 rating? Let's have some more realism please).

Insane DB Levels with no distortion, neutral sound

May not appeal to people looking for sexy speakers

They look small, but holy smokes can these things make serious noise. I guess powered speakers are the way to go when it comes to in-your-face Home Theater. Ive never heard big amps powering BIG speakers that can keep their grip like these things do. Some serious adiophiles may not like their tonally nuetral sound, but since these are the same speakers that they are engineering the DVDs on in the first place, I'll go for accurate over seductive. Totally impressive.