Floorstanding loudspeakers — Genesis Quartet

The Quartet from Genesis Advanced Technologies is a four-tower active loudspeaker system in which each channel is split into a dipole midrange and tweeter wing and a separate servo-controlled woofer tower. It is custom-built in the USA, and in the Genesis range it sits alongside the Prime, Forte, Tribute and Maestro models.

Key specs that matter

Each wing carries an array of fifteen ring radiator tweeters of 1 inch, with 12 on the front and 3 on the back, plus a single 48-inch Genesis ribbon midrange. Each woofer tower holds eight 8-inch ribbed-aluminium cone woofers. Genesis rates the system at 16 Hz to 40 kHz within 3 dB, with a sensitivity of 90 dB at 1 W and 1 m, and the nominal load is 4 ohm. The servo bass amplifier supplies 500 W on each of two channels per side, fed by a 1.8 kVA power supply for every side. Per side, the mid and treble panel measures 190.5 x 53.3 x 40.6 cm and the woofer tower 190.5 x 38.1 x 66 cm, and the whole system weighs about 328 kg per side. Black acrylic in high gloss is standard, and other colours can be requested.

Engineering and use context

Separating the upper range from the bass lets the two tower types stand in different places, since the wings and the woofer columns do not have to share one enclosure. The wings radiate as a dipole line source, and the stack of bass drivers runs nearly the full height of a typical room. The external bass amplifier is a monoblock design built from two control modules, two amplifier modules and two power supply modules, one of each for every stack, and it uses Class D modules that Genesis describes as having zero propagation delay and higher current capability. Each amplifier module measures 20.3 x 30.5 x 33.0 cm, while each power supply box is 11.4 x 22.9 x 22.9 cm. Dedicated servo-bass cables come with the system. A tweeter level control sits on the wings, a midrange switch changes the height of the upper range, and the bass amplifier offers gain, low-pass, high-pass and phase adjustment. A SuperSub upgrade replaces the bass section with two 8-inch, two 12-inch and two 14-inch woofers per side on three channels.

Pairing

Because the bass section carries its own servo amplification, the owner adds a stereo power amplifier for the ribbon wings alone, driven from a line preamplifier.

Alternatives

The Genesis Tribute is a two-tower system that combines the same ribbon tweeter array and 48-inch midrange with an integrated servo woofer in one cabinet per side.