Genelec smart active loudspeakers recently provided an upgrade to the four music classrooms and studio of Lumit, Finland’s premier performing arts school, which was established in 2015 in the city of Kuopio.
In 2022, Lumit – now numbering around 600 students from across Finland – moved into a new building with high-tech facilities dedicated to the learning and practice of the performing arts. The building has seen a further upgrade, this time to its sound system.
The Genelec system was selected by Ville Heikkinen, a music lecturer and coordinator of the music studies department at Lumit. Heikkinen first tested a pair of Genelec S360s and a subwoofer for his band class to evaluate their performance as a band PA system over a month with numerous musical styles and instruments.
He confirmed: “Frankly, it worked out great across all genres. Initially I was a bit nervous about the short-term max SPL of 118 dB for the band – but in reality, even pushing it as hard as we could during our rehearsals, we couldn’t make it peak out – and we tried pretty hard.”
Satisfied with the tests, Heikkinen and the school’s in-house AV engineer opted for a pair of S360s, plus a 7380 subwoofer in both the band rehearsal class and the largest music classroom.
In both instances the S360s are wall-mounted, while the subwoofer is in its own designated position on the floor beneath the wall furniture. In the main band room, they are connected to the rackmount mixer and also to a desktop mixing console in the second rehearsal space.
In the other two music rooms, which are more dedicated to listening than playing and performance, there is a combination of wall-mounted 8330s and the slightly larger 8340 two-way loudspeakers. They are complemented by a 7370 subwoofer in each room.
Finally, in the studio, Heikkinen selected a pair of 8361 three-way coaxial studio loudspeakers, flagships of ‘The Ones’ range, combined with a 7380 subwoofer.
Heikkinen and his colleague carried out the installation and did all the wiring themselves. But Henri Ulmanen, a sales engineer at Genelec, calibrated all of the loudspeakers via Genelec’s GLM software.
Heikkinen concluded: “Visitors are always impressed with our audio systems. We’ve virtually eliminated feedback issues with the microphones, and keyboards sound amazing – we rarely require any EQ. Additionally, even though I was warned the S360s don’t have a particularly wide dispersion, I’m amazed at how detailed the sound is everywhere in the class. We get so much more information out of the music compared to listening through regular band PAs. We can hear all the tiny details and nuances we never heard before – as though a veil has been lifted from our ears.”
