... with a white van speaker system. It is a
Genesis Media Labs G-608 system to be exact. There is a lot of speculation on forums about white van speaker systems but I have not read many first hand accounts. I installed one the other day for a customer. The story is strange from the start. This particular customer owns a multi-million dollar house and has a $40,000 sound system downstairs paired with an old Mitsubishi projection TV that is on it's last legs.
He bought the Genesis system on Ebay for an unknown sum of money (hopefully not anywhere near the "MSRP"). To go with it he bought a Panasonic TH-50PZ700U 1080p plasma, a Samsung Blu-Ray player, and a Panasonic DMR-EZ475VK DVD/VCR recorder, and a URC TX-1000 remote control. All very nice equipment. It doesn't go well with the sound system at all.
I'll start with build quality. I wish I had pictures but all I had was my cell phone and I didn't want to take a bunch of pictures in front of a customer. The speakers are small, smaller than the pictures would lead one to believe. They stand no more than two and a half feet tall and are about four inches wide. They are extremely light and are finished with a orange peel "piano gloss" vinyl that was obviously applied in a dirty environment. The "sub" / receiver is textured black vinyl also with obvious dirt/particles showing through. The entire sub/receiver weighs in at less than five pounds (I didn't have a scale
). There are two analog meters on the front and a medium sized vacuum fluorescent display. The speakers and amp actually have binding posts, though they are very cheap and all are crooked. The remote has to be the most lightweight remote I have
ever seen. Even with two AAA batteries it felt like holding a feather. The system also came with a component video cable, baffling considering the system has no component video connections. The words on the box made my day though: "
Audio File Grade Component Video Cable".
The woofers in the speakers are three inch untreated paper painted silver with metalized mylar dust caps (a sure sign of quality
). The tweeters are metalized mylar. The "10 inch" sub is really an eight inch untreated paper cone woofer similar to those whizzer cone drivers found in 1980's vintage car audio systems. I wish I had a chance to crack open the speakers and see what, if any crossover components were inside.
Connecting the system was quite simple. The speaker wire that came with it was useless. It was smaller than 28 AWG. The binding posts were terrible. The holes in the posts were all crooked with some being almost 90 degrees out making it difficult to get the wire through the hole. It was also very easy to cross thread them. There are a total of four inputs on the back of the amp. There are two stereo analog inputs, a mini-jack "MP3" input, and a multichannel DVD input. Since there is no real processing in the unit there are no digital inputs and the only way to get any real surround sound is to use the multi-channel input. Luckily the Blu-Ray player had a multi-channel out and I was able to connect it that way.
So, how did it sound? I'll start off by saying I did not have high expectations. I can't say the system even lived up to those. After plugging it in for the first time and before turning it on I noted a hum emitting from the sub. The hum continued after powering on the system. When they system is powered on the light show on the front display begins. The analog meters light up blue and the digital meter displays a "wave" effect. The first thing I tried was Discovery HD Theater to test out the TV. The TV looked great, the sound system.... tinny. There is little to no mid range. The high end sounds very dull and muddy. The bass is sort of there but distorts at any moderate volume. There are several "surround" modes for stereo sources including Jazz and Hall. I heard no difference between any of them. They all sound like five channel stereo to me. Disappointingly, the analog meters never actually moved.
Next was Blu-Ray. The customer had Shooter ready to try. One plus for the Blu-Ray was that it was actually 5.1 surround sound due to the multi-channel input. That's about it. It sounded just as bad as the cable channels. I did not get a chance to play music on the system other than the musical score in the movie but I can only speculate that it wouldn't have fared any better.
To put the performance of the system into one sentence: It sounded downright terrible. Is it worth $4,799 as the website suggests? Not a chance!
Is it worth even $200? Not as far as I'm concerned. I have yet to hear any other HTiB that performed this bad. I'd have to say that even the sub-$50 Durabrand HTiB available at Wal-Mart sounds better. I wouldn't pay any amount of money for the Genesis G-608. OK, maybe $10 so I could rip it open and see what's inside.
