Among a growing contingent of retail establishments and commercial spaces seeking to use audio to raise customers’ experience, the Jesamondo Salon & Spa in Natick, Massachusetts, recently installed an audio system to complement its decor using Genelec Smart IP loudspeakers.
The business has a staff of more than 40 hairstylists, estheticians, nail technicians, massage therapists, make-up artists and a reiki master. Owner Matt Traiger had a particular ambiance in mind – and he has made it happen.
Genelec Inc Senior Technical Sales Manager Paul Stewart is himself a patron of Jesamondo. Several months ago, his stylist mentioned plans for a major renovation involving all-new floors, ceilings, hair stations and spa rooms, and Stewart brought up Genelec...
Traiger was open to ideas for the renovation, and it didn’t take long for the prospect of a Genelec system to strike the right chord with him. ‘I chatted with Paul,’ Traiger recalls. ‘And then, an hour later, I’m at Genelec Inc’s Experience Center in Natick, and he’s showing me and testing everything. He just turned on the Genelec speakers, and it took half a second to tell a distinct difference from the sound system we had. The quality of the sound was just like night and day.’
Stewart connected Traiger with Zachary Lacroix, system engineer at Genelec integrator partner Parsons Audio, to get the ball rolling. Traiger’s vision included being able to dial in a festive mood for the salon’s mimosa-sipping patrons, matched with a much more relaxed/tranquil vibe in the nail room, spas and shampoo room. The system they arrived at included 22 Genelec 4435A Smart IP Dante-enabled active in-ceiling speakers, blending seamlessly into Jesamondo’s chic aesthetic and being able to serve Jesamondo’s distinct spaces (two speakers in the reception area, one in each of two bathrooms off reception, two in the nail room, seven in the salon, two in the shampoo room, one in each of four individual spas, and one in each for a spa bathroom, the spa lobby and the hallway outside the spa rooms). Additionally, on-wall dials leveraging Q-Sys automation systems offer intuitive zone management, individual speaker muting, and overall control.
Prior to the renovation, Traiger relied on a single Pandora feed for music for the entire facility, which occasionally created a dissonance between the needs for the salon and the more subdued spaces. Now, there are four different Pandora feeds, fully routable to any room, to make sure that each space can dial in just the right vibe.
‘The benefit of using an IP system is that each speaker is individually addressable,’ Lacroix says. ‘You can change the routing and the grouping down the road if you need to. It’s not all tied together on one cable.
‘There was nothing that wasn’t done to perfection,’ he reflects. ‘Walking into here now is the same as walking into that five-star hotel spa retreat – that five-star hotel salon retreat. That’s what we’ve created here, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the Genelec system.’
More: www.genelec.com
