Dallas Audio Post recently became the first U.S. installation of Genelec’s new 1237A Tri-Amplified Smart Active Monitor (SAM) system, utilzing proprietary AutoCal and GLM technologies and Class D amplification.
It’s the latest implementation of Genelec at the post-production house, which has utilized Genelec monitors throughout the course of its 20-year history. The firm handles a variety of projects including TV and film as well as corporate, live event, political, video game, sports clients and much more, with specific jobs including voiceover, sound design, mixing, custom music scoring, ADR and Foley work.
The current 10,500-square-foot facility was built from the ground up about two-and-a-half years ago, and it is the fourth facility that Dallas Audio Post has called home since its founding.
“It has five audio studios,” says Roy Machado, president and creative director, of the new facility. “Four are traditional TV mixing stages with adjoining recording areas, and the fifth is a theatrical film mixing stage – the only one of its kind in Texas and probably the only one of its kind between New York and L.A. – and all five rooms have their own Pro Tools HD rigs.
“If you go back through our history, Dallas Audio Post has been a Genelec user since its inception 20 years ago,” he continues. “We started out using 1030As in our first incarnation, and as time moved along we started using 1032s for one of our rooms in an LCR format with an array of 1031As for surround. We also had another room that was using 8050s.
“So we’ve always had a lot of trust in Genelec monitoring, and the quality of our mixes was very solid and would transport well to broadcast or live environments. Moving forward to this facility we still have one room that is outfitted with 1032s in LCR and a 1031 array for surround mixing.”
Machado adds, “In our current facility, we have a medium- to large-sized room, and we had been using the 8050s but wanted something a big larger. So when we heard that Genelec was coming out with a 1237A, we were very interested in those because we knew not only that the speaker would sound great, but that the integration of onboard DSP and GLM software would deliver something great for us.
“As soon as we could, we called our dealer and started the ball rolling to be one of the first, if not the first, 1237A facility. We sourced them through Sweetwater Sound and senior sales engineer Robert Williams. I think we ended up getting serial number 2 and serial number 4.”
Machado and his team have been very happy with the performance to this point. “Once we put the 1237A’s in the room and then shot the room with the GLM software, we were absolutely in love. I mean the definition that they had! The familiarity of the sound was still there, but we had a much wider sweet spot. The room tuning software is spot-on; we double-checked it against other room tuning tools that we look at and use, and we confirmed that the GLM software is exactly on-point, both in the frequency domain and the time domain.
“The quality of the sound is outstanding. This is the first time that we’ve had a 3-way speaker at Dallas Audio Post. Typically all the other Genelecs that we have had been two-way speakers. The extra definition that you get from having a 3-way speaker is fantastic, and we are just absolutely loving those speakers. As a matter of fact, we already are making plans to upgrade our A room, which has the 1032s and 1031 arrays, to use the 1237As as well, because they are that good.”
