Brighton, UK (January 22, 2018)—Record producer Andy Barlow didn’t work on U2’s latest album in his kitchen…but he could have, as that’s where he keeps a pair of Genelec 8030 monitors. They’re not alone, however; over in his home’s studio, there’s Genelec 1238 main monitors and a set of 8331 coaxial 3-way monitors, used as his mobile system for mixing on the road.
Andy Bensley of UK-based Genelec distributor Source Distribution set up the new 1238s in the Brighton studio “where I do pretty much all of my mixing, from U2 to David Gray and Lamb in just the past year,” said Barlow. He wanted them after working with a pair during several months co-producing U2’s new album, Songs Of Experience.
“We used the big 1238CF monitors in a makeshift studio inside the Canadian Embassy in Dublin,” he said. “It was opposite Bono’s house, in a huge room that needed all the acoustic help it could get. The 1238s and the use of GLM software were a huge bonus in that respect. The album was mostly made in places like that—mansions, hotels, venues. The only purpose-built studio we used was Rick Rubin’s place, the Shangri-La in Malibu, where I had a pair of 8050s. The band members really like Genelec, too.”
Much of his production time was spent in a smaller room at the Embassy “where I preferred to mix because [Genelec 8351s] sounded great in there,” said Barlow.
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Now his home studio is set up with 1238s. “The 1238s are absolutely amazing; I couldn’t imagine a better sounding monitor in this context,” says Barlow. “They sounded great straight out of the boxes, but then we ran the room through the GLM processing and they sounded 30% better again. We made a few further adjustments by ear, as opposed to the GLM microphone, and now they just light up the room in such a beautiful way. You can feel every frequency, and play them really loud yet still talk at a normal, relaxed level. The mix is wide and smooth and there’s not a hint of distortion. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
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