Genelec schools with HTWK Leipzig

With the creation of a series of immersive spaces designed to give its students an understanding of advanced production techniques, HTWK Leipzig had to up its game – and turned to Genelec’s “The Ones” series of three-way coaxial monitors.

Working with VST Saalfeld and local Genelec distributor Audio Pro Heilbronn, the university of applied sciences needed a monitoring solution that would be flexible enough to meet the needs of multiple formats and provide students with new creative environments to learn in. It needed to upgrade its presentation room to 7.1.4 to be able to play back reference productions made in Dolby Atmos, Auro 3D, MPEG-H and other experimental formats.

The university had an additional requirement to create an immersive suite where a complete 17.2 half-dome setup could be used as part of HTWK Leipzig’s ambisonics workflow and for external renderers.

“We were looking at several projects simultaneously,” explains Christian Birkner, technical manager at HTWK Leipzig’s campus studios. “We needed monitors that would be able to scale with the room sizes to be able to create comparable listening situations across the new spaces. We’ve used Genelec monitors for more than 15 years now, so I was pretty sure that The Ones wouldn’t disappoint us.

“They create very accurate listening situations for the various spaces. In addition to this, we liked the easy and very versatile setup of the systems with GLM 4 calibration software, while the stylish look of The Ones made the systems appear very modern and special.”

The core of the new system is based on the 8331 three-way coaxial monitor, with 8340 and 8350 two-way nearfield models also called into action. Low end across the new spaces is handled by 7360, 7370 and 7380 subwoofers, while Genelec’s GLM 4 system provided an additional teaching opportunity.

“The new GLM 4 system handled all the necessary corrections automatically – there was practically no need for any manual adjustments,” adds Birkner. “It’s a great feature to adapt each set of monitors to the room and also to teach how DSP systems for monitors work. Additionally, GLM’s GRADE room acoustic report is a great tool for analysing and fine-tuning the monitoring system and the room. With GLM 4 it’s now even more convenient to setup and control our monitors, and since it’s now compatible with newer Mac OS systems, we can save one extra computer just for measuring the monitors.”