TV Studio Giant Director's Cut Chooses Genelec's Monitoring Solutions

Its productions include Finnish formats of international franchises such as Voice of Finland, Dancing with the Stars, All Against One and many more. Genelec’s monitoring solutions play an integral role across their varied portfolio of shows.

The firm runs several studios in Helsinki, which are primarily used to carry out services on entertainment shows. Two of the biggest studios are connected to a control facility known as DC3, which consists of an audio control room, a production room, and a visual control room. In DC3, Director’s Cut carries out work on shows including All Against One and Posse, as well as several talk shows. All three of these rooms have been recently renovated, and the company decided to continue to use Genelec products following positive experiences in the past.

“There’s a long history with commercial television studios in these spaces – the studios are several decades old and have been used in many of the biggest shows throughout Finnish commercial television history,” says Tomi Kolistaja, Sound Supervisor at Director’s Cut Ltd. “And throughout those years, Genelec monitors have been in use within these spaces.”

The renovated audio control room now has a 5.1 monitoring system that consists of five Genelec 8240A studio monitors and a 7270A subwoofer. The production and vision control rooms continue to use Genelec 1029A studio monitors in stereo, as the majority of their work is broadcast in stereo.

“I think it’s great that we can rely on good quality products from Genelec, and the rooms have a deep history with their monitors,” adds Tomi, who has been particularly impressed with the 8240A monitors, which provide excellent frequency response. “The DSP of the 8240 monitors has helped us to take control of the renovated room, after some less absorbing materials were introduced after the walls were repainted.”

Genelec’s presence stretches beyond the permanent studio at Director’s Cut, and its monitors also feature in its Outside Broadcast (OB) van, which is used for Voice of Finland, a show which attracts hundreds of thousands of viewers each week. For this show, a separate music mix truck from Transmix Ltd is where the original mix is made by its staff. This is then sent to Directors Cut’s OB van, where the music is mixed to speech and tape sections. In the OB van’s audio control room, there are three 8040A monitors in the front, and two 8030A monitors in the back, with a 7060B subwoofer. The van is so well equipped that some popular domestic programmes – including sketch comedy show Putous – are able to be entirely mixed in the OB van.

Director’s Cut has been delighted with the high performance and continued reliability of Genelec products throughout the years, and this successful relationship looks set to continue. “Our company has a long history with Genelec,” adds Tomi. “We’re happy to choose Finnish products from Genelec to fulfil our audio monitoring needs in the future as well.”

Beyond the entertainment sphere, Director’s Cut is also a big player in the sporting arena of television shows. They have two large control rooms in the same building as DC3 dedicated to sports, known as M5 and M6. Both control rooms feature a Genelec 5.1 monitoring set up, which consist of 5 x 8030A studio monitors and a 7060B subwoofer. From these facilities, the company produces domestic programmes for the Ice Hockey World Championships and Formula One. The company also has three smaller control rooms with stereo 8020A monitors for smaller sports events, and four video edit rooms which feature either stereo 8030A or 1029A monitors.

KIT LIST

DC3 AUDIO CONTROL ROOM
5 x 8240A SAM™ Studio Monitor
1 x 7270A SAM™ Studio Subwoofer

DC3 PRODUCTION ROOM
2 x 1029A Studio Monitor

DC3 VISION CONTROL ROOM
2 x 1029A Studio Monitor

OUTSIDE BROADCAST VAN / AUDIO CONTROL ROOM
3 x 8040A Studio Monitor
2 x 8030A Studio Monitor
1 x 7060B Studio Subwoofer

OUTSIDE BROADCAST VAN / PRODUCTION ROOM
5 x 8020A Studio Monitor
1 x 7050B Studio Subwoofer

M5 CONTROL ROOM
5 x 8030A Studio Monitor
1 x 7050B Studio Subwoofer

M6 CONTROL ROOM
5 x 8030A Studio Monitor
1 x 7050B Studio Subwoofer

The Genelec 8240A studio monitor and the 7270A subwoofer were both in production between years 2006 and 2016. They were replaced by the newer models 8340A and 7370A. Also the monitors 8030A, 8040A, and the 7050B subwoofer, have newer, improved versions, 8030C, 8040B and 7050C.