As the sound-for-picture media industry sector moves deeper into immersive sound, the Sound & Music Technology program at Valencia College in Orlando, FL, offers its students not one but four studios configured for monitoring in the 7.1.4 format, including four overhead/height channels. Furthermore, one of those studios is certified for the Dolby Atmos platform – one of the only such facilities in pro-audio education. These studios and others at the college share an audio-monitoring infrastructure made up of Smart Active Monitors from Genelec.
Two of the facility’s six studios and listening environments, Studios A (the facility’s “flagship” room) and B, utilize 7.1.4 arrays using seven Genelec 8350As for their L-C-R and surround arrays and four Genelec 8340As as the height array. Additionally, both of these rooms employ a pair of the Genelec 1234As as a separate main set of farfield monitors for full-range monitoring. Mixroom 1, which is Dolby Atmos-certified, uses Genelec 1238As for its L-C-R and 8340As for the surround arrays, while four 8330As are used for its height array. Mixroom 2 is setup in a similar fashion, but uses 1237As instead for its L-C-R. All four studios are also equipped with dual subwoofers using either Genelec 7370A or 7360A Smart Active Subwoofers.
Joe McBride, the teaching lab supervisor at Valencia College’s Sound & Music Technology program, housed in Valencia College’s new Film Production and Sound Technology Building, said the only choice for these rooms was Genelec, which offers a combination of pure, transparent sound and leading-edge technology advances. “Nothing sounds as good as Genelec,” said McBride. “Having Genelecs throughout the production rooms means that mixes can translate accurately between rooms. The way something sounds in one studio is how it will sound in any of the others, which is the way all leading sound facilities are designed.”
McBride also relies on features like the Genelec Loudspeaker Manager (GLM), a digital-room-correction software platform that manages levels, distance delays, and frequency balances of up to 30 networked speakers, all in one intuitive interface, and Genelec’s AutoCal, which automatically measures, analyzes, and adjusts speaker settings. “These features are a way that we can have the studios designed to serve different purposes yet always provide a consistent listening environment for our students,” he said. “Genelec is what professionals use at the highest levels of this industry, so it’s what our students experience when they’re here. Genelec gets them ready for the real world.”
