Located in the heart of San Francisco’s advertising district, One Union Recording started with a single studio in 1995, building on award-winning work to eventually grow into a five-studio facility. However, in July 2017, all that nearly came to an end, when a fire and related water damage threatened to end One Union Recording’s remarkable run. But the determination of owner John McGleenan and his staff – almost all of whom have been with him for the studio’s nearly 25-year existence – weren’t ready to let that happen; they rolled up their sleeves and with the help of longtime partners like Genelec and its vendor, Cutting Edge, One Union Recording would end up back on its feet.
“I can’t say there weren’t a lot of sleepless nights, but we came back,” says McGleenan, who reopened the studio last September. One major source of help in that was Cutting Edge Audio & Video, the equipment retailer that McGleenan has relied on ever since the studio first opened, and which provided records of purchase orders going back that far, enabling more efficient insurance processing and accurate recreation of the facility’s five studios. That included the Genelec monitoring that One Union Recording has used for a quarter century. “We’ve been an all-Genelec studio from day one, and I consider them to be very much part of our foundation,” says McGleenan.
Studio 4 at the new One Union Recording, featuring active monitoring from Genelec.
Now, Genelec continues to be part of the studio’s future. Cutting Edge provided monitors to outfit Studio 4, a second Dolby Atmos®-certified mix room. Three Genelec 1237A active monitors are used as the room’s L-C-R array, while eight Genelec 8341A Smart Active Monitors™ constitute its rear-surround and overhead monitoring arrays, with a Genelec 7380A Smart Active Subwoofer for the “point-1” channel. They join the three 1237A and two 8341A’s and 7380A, purchased last June for Studio 5. In addition, Cutting Edge Audio & Video Group replaced the older Genelec 1037 monitors in Studios 2 and 3 with new 1237A stereo pairs in each.
“John and the team at One Union Recording are long-time customers, and we wanted to do all that we could to help them in the wake of the devastating fire,” says Cutting Edge Solutions Sales Executive Tom Anderson. “They picked Genelec for the same reason everyone else does — it’s a best-of-breed solution. With features like the Genelec Loudspeaker Manager™ (GLM™) and AutoCal™, One Union agreed that Genelec was the best fit and a solid investment.”
“We live by the Genelecs, especially since the fire,” says McGleenan. “Our senior engineers know that they have consistent monitoring experiences from room to room, project to project, thanks to the Genelecs. They can trust the rooms and trust the mixes. That’s why One Union Recording 1.0 and 2.0 have always stuck with Genelec, and always will.”
For more information visit genelec.com.
