Grammy-winning mastering engineer Gavin Lurssen has made Genelec’s 8341A monitors a centerpiece of his portable reference setup.

Grammy-winning mastering engineer Gavin Lurssen
Grammy-winning mastering engineer Gavin Lurssen

Natick, MA (June 9, 2021)—Grammy-winning mastering engineer Gavin Lurssen has made Genelec’s 8341A monitors a centerpiece of his portable reference setup, which he uses to do much of his preliminary work.

Lurssen, whose credits include Queens of the Stone Age, Ben Harper and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, notes, “I started in the early ‘90s working for the late Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab, and recording engineer George Massenburg was a regular client of Doug’s for lots of his projects; through him, I was first exposed to their 1031A and 1030A monitors. I was particularly taken with the 1030As after hearing them in a mix room at what was then Ocean Way Studios in Hollywood, so Doug surprised me with my own pair, which I still own.”

In fact, says Lurssen, “[A]fter all these miles, I just had them re-coned and the amps rec-capped, but kept the original bulletproof tweeters. Like most mastering engineers, I own multiple sets of monitors, but the Genelec 1030As have been an important reference for me over the years, especially when it comes to a mobile environment.”

Bay Eight Changes Things Up with Genelec

Fast-forward to a few years ago, before the pandemic: “I enjoyed going to these weekly lunches and meetups in Burbank with professionals in the audio industry; it’s a great way to see friends and colleagues and to stay on top of the latest tools and trends as well. I usually interact with the manufacturer reps that are there, and so it’s no surprise that I gravitated toward the new technology from Genelec! So that began my journey with the 8341A Smart Active Monitor,” he says.

He notes, “There are various ways in which a near-field monitor can be useful to a mastering engineer, and one of the most useful things is to be able to go mobile, while still being able to listen to and evaluate mixes and give feedback to clients with confidence, no matter where I am set up. Accuracy is the name of the game. The Genelec 8341As provide me with very, very accurate playback, even if I’m in a compromised environment.

“When you have something like 8341s, if you put them in the road case and take some computer gear with you, you can actually set up a pretty accurate listening environment. You can travel around and evaluate things that way—so if I’m traveling, I can take them with me.”

Genelec • www.genelec.com


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