Ranked among Helsinki’s premier law firms, Castrén & Snellman is also a pioneer of sustainable business practice in the legal services industry and was the first Finnish law firm to join the UN Global Compact initiative. The company recently carried out an extensive renovation of its client areas and staff workspaces, calling in Finnish A/V integrator 4Business Oy, who specialise in tailored A/V and automation systems. Now completed, the new A/V system includes a large number of Genelec loudspeakers.

‘Genelec was simply an ideal choice for this project,’ states 4Business COO, Janne Lankinen. ‘On top of Genelec’s product quality, appearance and neutral sound reproduction, the company’s values and commitment to sustainable development fit beautifully into the original brief.

‘Our aim was to modernise Castrén & Snellman’s activity–based office, including lobby areas, meeting rooms, conference rooms and training facility, with the requirement that the technology solutions would be as reliable and futureproof as possible. Genelec products are a perfect match for the customer’s quality standards, and product lifecycle is the longest in the industry. Thanks to sophisticated design and smart in-room calibration capabilities, Genelec products also reproduce the human voice very naturally, which makes them an excellent choice for video conferencing and speech reproduction systems.’

4Business installed a wide variety of Genelec speakers throughout the space depending on function, ranging from a pair of 8351 smart active loudspeakers supplemented by two 7360 subwoofers in the 100-capacity event space, to the very compact 4010 and 4020 installation loudspeakers for the wide variety of conference and board rooms.

‘The solution we chose for music, speech and multimedia consists of two carefully tuned 8351 smart active loudspeakers, with two 7360 smart active subwoofers and an automatic mixer, all integrated into an easy-to-use A/V system,’ says Castrén & Snellman ICT Specialist, Mikko Kurhela. ‘The space is rectangular with the direction of presentation from the long wall into the room, so we needed wide-angle speakers to ensure that speech is reproduced throughout the space with clarity and intelligibility. We also wanted high quality sound at low frequencies for music and multimedia, which we got by adding the two 7360 subwoofers. The speakers and subwoofers were tuned for the room using Genelec’s GLM calibration software.’

The Paja gym uses four ceiling-mounted 4020 speakers linked to a Sonos Port player for wireless music playback, while the music and speech sound system in the Tori Café – which has a company library attached directly to the space – uses four 8430 IP loudspeakers.

‘Castrén & Snellman uses this multipurpose facility both as separate areas and sometimes as one large venue, for example for monthly company updates,’ explains Lankinen. ‘The main challenge was to provide the flexibility for the customer to realign the layout without compromising reliability and ease-of-use. We solved this by using streamlined mobile screen stands with integrated custom loudspeaker mounts, with embedded AV-over-IP technologies for audio and video distribution combined with 8430 IP loudspeakers with their AES67 streaming capability. The customer can easily move these mobile units into the required position, and everything fires up automatically.’

Kurhela confirms that Genelec was a natural choice: ‘The stylish, uniform design language, audio quality, versatility and long lifecycle of the speakers were key values for us. The long lifecycle means that we’ll be able to re-use the speakers in different solutions following future renovations. As a company we are committed to finding sustainable solutions, so Genelec is a perfect fit for us from that point of view. The fact that they are an internationally renowned Finnish speaker manufacturer was also a plus.’

‘Genelec products are very familiar to our technical staff and thus are quick to install,’ Lankinen adds. ‘Everything always works out of the box and we receive top-notch support from the Genelec factory in Iisalmi. Shipments generally arrive right on time and there are no efficiency losses on site. We are able to deliver high quality, visually aesthetic, reliable solutions that last for years. It’s companies like Genelec who enable us to shine at what we do.’