Marco Hietala chooses the 8351s for His New Home Studio

As bass player and male singer for Finnish symphonic metal titans Nightwish and Tarot, Marco Hietala is a hero to music fans all over the world, as well as a force to be reckoned with on stage. Perhaps less well known is his devotion to recording the music he writes. Having recently moved into a new home, Marco has created a remarkable home studio, named Marco’s Cockpit 2.0, complete with Genelec 8351 SAM™ monitors.

For this exclusive One on One video, we visited Marco in his new room and discovered how the auto calibration feature of the 8351s has helped to create his truly high-end recording environment.

“It’s small but very professional. The signal paths and equipment are clean enough for me to create album quality sound,” he explains. “I’m the sort of guy who likes to write music and lyrics, try them out for himself and record them. So this is quite perfect.”

Marco’s Cockpit is a home studio unlike any other, having been partially designed by Finnish acoustician Janne Riionheimo. Genelec also played a key role in the studio’s completion.

“I got even more help than I could hope for from having a good relationship with Genelec,” says Marco. “I have been using their gear for several years so we decided to try the 8351s, to find out how they would sound in here. So far they sound very good.”

He adds that automatic calibration using SAM™ is a big part of the reason why. “With these monitors, calibration does not mean just listening and then tweaking knobs. This system is quite elaborate – if there are reflections from the walls, ceiling, floor, whatever, then the software calculates the optimum correction.” The result, he adds, is “essential”.