Located in the heart of San Francisco’s advertising district, One Union Recording opened in 1995 with a single studio, eventually growing into a five-studio facility. In 2017 a fire and related water damage threatened to end the facility’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 – rolled up their sleeves to put the studio back on its feet.

‘I can’t say there weren’t a lot of sleepless nights, but we came back,’ recalls McGleenan, who reopened the studio in September 2018. 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.

This included the Genelec monitoring that One Union Recording has used for 25 years. ‘We’ve been an all-Genelec studio from day one, and I consider them to be very much part of our foundation,’ says McGleenan.

Now, Genelec continues to be part of the studio’s future. Cutting Edge provided monitors to equip Studio 4, a second Dolby Atmos-certified mix room. Three Genelec 1237A active monitors are used as the room’s LCR array, while eight 8341A Smart Active Monitors constitute its rear-surround and overhead monitoring arrays, with a 7380A Smart Active Subwoofer for the ‘point-1’ channel. They join the three 1237A and two 8341As and 7380A 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, 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.’