We just had a small shootout between the 1029 and 8030 at an accoustically treated (but not even near perfect) studio in CM&T's facilities in Helsinki. The test material was all kinds of music. HipHop (dr Dre), rock/pop (the Cardigans new album), nit-picky-technology-punks (Steely Dan), and some heavier old stuff (Nirvana, smashing pumpkins) etc. Had no classical music with me though but my guess is it will sound good too.
I'm happy to say that the 8030 outperformed the old 1029 by a pretty large margin. Genelec have finally done something to the rather harsh tweeter. It's not perfect (the Dynaudios still sound sweeter IMO) but it's much better than before. The stereo imaging is EXTREMELY good and the resolution is fantastic. We even managed to hear the room/reverb used on the Steely Dan albums snare (!!!)
. The sound is also a bit less compressed on the new model which might be a problem to learn. It could lead to overcompressing stuff in the beginning. The bass responce on these small speakers is stunning. We ran a 50hz sine wave trough and it came out loud and clear on the 8030a whereas the 1029 couldn't reproduce it at all! Even with the massive reflex port hole in the back of the monitor the bass still sounded quite tight. I haven't had a chance to monitor a non-reflex port design for a long time (except the NS10 
) so I don't know how much 'tightness' it sacrifices with the big port.The build quality is absolutely fantastic with rather thick aluminium chassis and accoustically 'invisible' grilles to protect both the tweeter and woofer (on ALL models! Even the big 8050!). This makes the monitor extremely rugged and safe to carry around in a bag. Visually the monitor looks rather weird in my opinion. It looks much cheaper than it sounds. Kind of similar to some JBL monitors which look sometimes quite silly but apparently sound fantastic.
I don't know how well these will translate over to other systems but I'll let you guys know once I've done some mixes at home in my accoustically poor room together with the matching subwoofer (7050a).
Conclusion:
- Is it better than the old model? Yes.
- Is it worth the money? Yes.
- Is it rugged and well built? Yes!
- Will it translate well? Dunno yet.
Cheers!
bManic