GRAMMY Award-winners Imagine Dragons is currently on their Smoke + Mirrors tour, in support of the album of the same name. And as band frontman Dan Reynolds told Rolling Stone magazine in June, they’ve actually been more on the road than off since going out to support their 2012 Night Visions LP.
However, that’s not stopping Imagine Dragons’ front of house mixer Scott Eisenberg from working on the mix of what may one day become an Imagine Dragons concert film, mixing in hotel rooms and dressing rooms with a pair of Genelec 8250A SAM studio monitors with Genelec Loudspeaker Manager (GLM) software.
Together, they offer Eisenberg both the best-sounding monitoring system possible and one that will give him a consistent monitoring environment no matter where he’s working.
The 8250A monitors and GLM software were purchased from GC Pro in Sherman Oaks, California.
“There’s no other way this could work as well,” says Eisenberg of this combination of Genelec technologies. After mixing the night’s concert through the Adamson Energia P.A. system on an Avid Profile console the tour is carrying, he finds a space he can get to work on the film-sound mix from the multitracks from the Avid Pro Tools system he uses to record the band’s shows.
“I’m literally setting up a mix studio in hotel rooms and dressing rooms on the road,” he says. And every time he fires up the Pro Tools system, the sound he hears through the Genelec 8250A speakers is instantly familiar, enabling him to pick up exactly where he left off the day before.
That’s because the GLM 2.0 Genelec Loudspeaker Manager’s monitor control networking system will electronically analyze whatever room he’s in, recall all parameters and settings he’s stored in system setup files, and then adapt them for the acoustical properties of that particular space at that particular time.
The GLM software features adjustment of levels, distance delays and flexible room response compensation equalization using Genelec’s state-of-the-art and robust AutoCal calibration system.
Genelec AutoCal is an integrated process for automated measurement, analysis and adjustment of every SAM monitor and subwoofer on the GLM network for either a single location (SinglePoint), or for one-, two- or three-person mixing environments (MultiPoint). GLM will adapt Genelec SAM monitors to various spaces, allowing reduced perceived differences between listening environments or positions, and providing automatic calibration of levels and distance-compensating delays for accurate and stable sound stage imaging.
“The acoustics change from day to day, location to location, but I start with a good foundation every time with the GLM,” says Eisenberg, who says he has used the SMAART software he uses to tune the live-sound system in concert venues as a reference for the GLM, and has discovered that the GLM is giving him accurate soundfields that recreate what he experienced during the live shows.
And it gets him there quickly — “I hit a button and within thirty seconds the GLM software has analyzed the room, made the delay and EQ corrections and I’m ready to go,” he says. “That saves me tons of time, which is something I don’t have a lot of on the road. It’s pretty amazing what the GLM software can do, and how good the 8250As sound. It’s really like having a great mix studio anywhere I am.”
