The newly-opened L’Oréal Academy, Lisbon
Portugal - Beauty and cosmetics giant, L’Oréal, has established L’Oréal Academies across the world to train hairdressers in the latest techniques and trends, and on how to utilise the latest L’Oréal products.
One of the most recent academies is situated in the vibrant Portuguese capital of Lisbon. Thanks to integration specialists, Garrett Audiovisuais, the L’Oréal Academy, Lisbon, has become the group’s first digital academy, and the first to deploy Genelec loudspeakers throughout their training rooms.
“Previously L’Oréal used to rent in equipment for all of their events,” explains Garrett’s Carlos Melo who was closely involved in the project. “However, after discussions with us, they decided that it would be better to have their own in-house solution rather than having to rely on external AV companies, as it would be cheaper in the long term and more convenient. They also knew that they could rely on us for support whenever necessary. We recommended Genelec as it delivers everything they required: excellent intelligibility when using microphones, extremely high quality low level ambient sound, and can still blow people away when the DJ comes in.”
There are four rooms in total over two floors which are used largely for training but also for parties and other events. They can operate independently or combined in any configuration. The ground floor and first floor control rooms communicate so that L’Oréal can even host a single event across the two floors if necessary – since all audio and video can be streamed live across all four spaces, making the system extremely flexible.
For the audio system, Garrett specified two Genelec 8050B loudspeakers and one 7070A subwoofer per room. The 8050B was designed as a studio monitoring loudspeaker, thus guaranteeing absolutely pristine audio quality at any playback level and at any listening position in the room. Additionally, a number of AIC25 ceiling speakers have been installed throughout the lobby and other public areas.
According to the Academy supervisor, Sofia Fernandes, the new audio system has made a huge difference, both in operational terms as well as quality. “These rooms are in use every day in a variety of combinations,” she explains. “Set up is now a piece of cake: all I have to do is plug in the microphone and we’re essentially ready to go. The sound is amazing, whether it’s speech or music, at high level or low levels.”
(Jim Evans)

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