27 and Still Going Strong – Tony Cousins’ Genelec S30s
Tony Cousins has been at the forefront of the UK mastering scene for as long as anyone can remember, starting as a cutting engineer at Townhouse Studios in 1980 and then progressing to become one of the founders of London’s Metropolis Mastering in 1993, alongside Ian Cooper and Tim Young. With the aim of creating audio ‘to a standard never previously achieved’, Tony and his colleagues have gone on to firmly establish Metropolis as a global force in music mastering.
For most of that journey Genelec S30 loudspeakers have been Cousins’ faithful companions, and having just been refurbished after 27 years of loyal service, his S30s are enjoying a brand new lease of life.
“I bought them back in 1989 when I was still at Townhouse,” recalls Cousins. “I always liked them because they were good to listen to, they had great low end, and I liked the open-ness of them. Back then I used Eastlakes as my main monitors, but I found the S30s really comfortable to listen to, and I started referring to them regularly. With the S30s, Genelec had obviously identified the requirement for a smaller reference monitor, but then went one further by matching the amplifiers to the drivers, and allowing engineers like me to fine-tune the speakers to the room.”
More recently Cousins relocated the S30s to his listening room at home, and sensing that they could probably benefit from some refurbishment after decades of hard work, took them to Chris Heap, senior service engineer at HHB Communications. Heap’s thorough overhaul of the speakers involved replacing both LF and MF drivers and gaskets, repairing one of the ribbon tweeters, re-building the power supplies and replacing all the internal signal cabling and input pots. After re-assembling, checking the speaker alignment and running load tests, Heap returned the S30s to their grateful owner.
“They now sound better than ever” comments Cousins. “I can’t believe how much top end has been restored. As well as replacing the drivers, Chris was able to perform a few little custom tweaks for me like making the rear panel level control a little more accessible, which is really useful! It’s good to see that Genelec have very, very sensibly equipped themselves with spares for legacy products like this - to me that’s absolutely critical, and is indicative of a great company.”
So with the S30s set to give him many more years of reliable service, Cousins ponders over what he looks for in a mastering loudspeaker, and then concludes: “You really need fine detail. While the S30s have both even-ness and power, I’ve always liked the fact that they have a level of detail that really draws you into the music – to me, that’s what’s most important.”
To find out more about Tony Cousins, please visit:
www.metropolismastering.com/tony-cousins
To find out more about the work of HHB’s support team, please visit:
www.hhb.co.uk/support