In the heart of Estonia’s capital city, the Tallinn College of Music & Ballet (MUBA) is currently the most advanced music and ballet school in Europe. The two rooms that make up the Sound Recording Studio are equipped with Genelec monitoring.
Uniting three historic and prestigious institutions – Tallinn Music High School, Tallinn Ballet School and Tallinn Georg Ots Music School – MUBA prides itself on producing highly independent, passionate, creative graduates. The complex includes four music halls, two auditoria and six ballet studios, as well as classrooms and practice rooms. Furnished by local Genelec partner msonic Baltic, the Sound Recording Studio provides MUBA’s musicians and sound engineering students with a world class facility, where they can hone their skills and gain studio experience to equip them for their future careers.
‘Control Room 1 houses our Rupert Neve Designs 5088 console and takes the user back to the “age of analogue consoles” for recording and mixing,’ says Studio Manager, Andres Olema. ‘It serves as our main control room for recording from our studio room, allowing our first course Sound Engineering students to do their mixing assignments fully analogue with the Neve and outboard gear for the first half of the year.’
The space is equipped with a pair of Genelec 8341A coaxial close-field models to complement the room’s main monitors which Olema says, ‘gives us the nearfield accuracy that you definitely need when working long hours with the console’.
‘For an educational institution shaping the next generation of audio professionals, dependable monitoring is not just a technical choice but a long-term investment in quality listening and critical decision making,’ adds Jürgen Urbanik, Marketing & Business Development Manager at msonic Baltic. ‘The combination of world class analogue recording through the 5088 console, and highly accurate Genelec monitoring, creates an exceptional ecosystem that reflects real world professional studio standards.’
In contrast, Control Room 2 is set up in a 5.1 configuration, with five 8351Bcoaxial models and a 7370A subwoofer. ‘This space functions more as our working in-the-box room, together with the possibility to get acquainted with 5.1 surround mixing,’ Olema says.
Elsewhere in the campus, Genelec 8000 series monitors are used in various production and classroom spaces, while a pair of floating 4430A Smart IP PoE loudspeakers provide talkback for recording performances where the musicians aren’t using headphones.
Explaining the choice of three-way models from The Ones series for Studios 1 and 2, Olema points out a connection with Genelec that pre-dates the creation of MUBA in 2022: ‘The origins of our department here stretch right back to the Georg Ots Music School, which always had Genelec two-way monitors in its small studios. So, The Ones family offered us a familiar and trusted sound with even more precision.’
The Ones’ internal DSP and integration with GLM loudspeaker manager software allows them to be tailored to the acoustics of any room. ‘GLM software really helped us to calibrate and refine the monitoring systems in both rooms, which is especially important with the 5.1 surround system that we have in Control Room 2. With GLM it’s really easy to calibrate the setup and get as much precision as possible out of The Ones,’ Olema says.
With the Sound Recording Studio now in daily use by students, Olema is in no doubt at all that the project has been a resounding success: ‘We certainly achieved what we hoped for. Of course, some adjustments and improvements were needed to make everything run smoothly, but all-in-all we’re very happy. We feel that in addition to just being a really nice studio, it’s also very versatile as a whole – which is much needed in a school setting such as ours.’
‘We’re proud to have supported MUBA in creating a truly future-proof monitoring environment where accuracy, reliability and musical truth are at the core of the learning experience,’ Urbanik says. ‘It’s especially rewarding to see how actively the facility is being used across disciplines, from sound engineering to rhythm musicians and ensemble recordings. This level of daily engagement confirms that MUBA now has a reference grade studio environment that will inspire creativity, support high-level teaching and serve students for decades to come.’
More: www.genelec.com