Dynaudio AIR 6
A DSP-driven studio monitor that turned a two-way near-field into a network node — and made room correction a front-panel affair.
Overview
Two hundred watts for the woofer, two hundred for the tweeter, a 6.5-inch driver crossing to a 1.1-inch soft-dome at a DSP-defined point — on paper the AIR 6 reads like a serious active near-field and not much more. The interesting part is what sits between the input and those amplifiers. Dynaudio Acoustics built the AIR Series in collaboration with TC Electronic, and the result is a monitor that treats setup as software: onboard DSP, a digital crossover, and an internal network that lets a rack of speakers behave like one system.
The driver complement is a 6.5-inch woofer paired with a 1.1-inch tweeter, biamplified by twin 200-watt internal amps. Mix (2002, p.126) put the crossover at 2,150 Hz with a 24 dB/octave slope, DSP-defined, and noted the 20.5-pound cabinets feel light for a 400-watt biamped system. The rated band is 40 Hz to 20 kHz — enough for near-field work, and the design assumes the lowest octave will be handed to a subwoofer when one is present. Converters run 24-bit at 96 kHz, and the crossover lives in the digital domain, which the design team claimed avoids the phase anomalies of passive networks. Pro Audio Review (June 2002, p.10) took that claim seriously and found the lower-than-average crossover point let the reviewer push EQ in the 2.2–2.8 kHz region without the phase trouble that passive designs tend to expose.
What separates the AIR 6 from a conventional powered monitor is the TC Link digital network. All audio and control information travels between monitors on that internal network, which allows central level control, solo and mute of individual units, recall of stored setups, and bass-management changes on the fly. The first AIR products were announced as biamplified two-way near-fields, with the AIR 6 and the larger AIR 15 sharing the same 1.1-inch tweeter and differing in woofer size. Subwoofers — the AIR Base 1 with a single 10-inch driver and the AIR Base 2 with two — round out a surround rig, each with its own 200-watt amplification and master/slave pairing.
Setup is where the system earns its keep. The AIR Soft software talks to any monitor over a Mac or PC and exposes every function with high-resolution graphics, including placement compensation presets — "against the wall" and, more usefully, "on the console," which applies a reverse comb filter to undo the acoustic signature of a meter bridge. Bass-management crossover is selectable from 50 Hz to 120 Hz. All of it is reachable from the front panel of a master unit, but the software makes it legible. Dynaudio shipped a calibration CD with the sweep tones needed for a full room setup, and the manual goes deep on room acoustics and bass management — unusual hand-holding for a studio monitor.
In the field the AIR 6 turns up in working rooms rather than collections. A Nashville facility standardized on AIR 15 surround systems across its control rooms, and a Chicago post house mixed on AIR 6s specifically because the monitors stayed out of the way of the room. That's the reputation: transparent, configurable, and honest about what a near-field can and can't do.
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