Valencia College in Orlando, Florida is using an audio-monitoring infrastructure made up of Genelec Smart Active Monitors in its studios.

The rooms – one of which is Dolby Atmos certified – offer Sound & Music Technology students a 7.1.4 monitoring environment, including four overhead/height channels.

Two of the facility’s six studios and listening environments, Studios A (the facility’s “flagship” room) and B, utilise 7.1.4 arrays using seven Genelec 8350A’s for their L-C-R and surround arrays and four Genelec 8340A’s as the height array. Both of these rooms also employ a pair of the Genelec 1234A’s as a separate main set of farfield monitors for full-range monitoring.

Mixroom 1, which is Dolby Atmos-certified, uses Genelec 1238A’s for its L-C-R and 8340A’s for the surround arrays, while four 8330A’s are used for its height array. Mixroom 2 is setup in a similar fashion, but uses 1237A’s 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 programme, housed in Valencia College’s new Film Production and Sound Technology Building, believes Genelec was the only choice for these rooms: “Having Genelecs throughout the production rooms means that mixes can translate accurately between rooms,” he said. “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) and Genelec’s AutoCal, which automatically measures, analyses, 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 explained. “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.”