Dynaudio is a much larger company than its Professional Audio division and, since taking over direct distribution of that part of the business from former TC Group, the company is already looking to the future and designing completely new models. Now, Dynaudio decided to formally announce they will cease production of the AIR Series reference monitors.
Following the acquisition of the TC Group of professional audio companies and brands by the Music Group (Behringer), Dynaudio decided to end it’s distribution agreement and take the distribution operation of its Dynaudio Professional range in-house. Now, the Danish company looks at the future and announced they will be discontinuing one of its flagship professional monitor products, the Dynaudio Professional Air Series - one of the very first digital, networkable and software controlled studio monitor solutions. No doubt, the evolution in audio network standards will have weighted on this decision, while the company looks at updating its aging catalogue, now composed only of the BM MKIII series with four nearfield monitors and two subwoofers, the classic analogue monitor series, with the popular BM6A and BM15A models and the Studio Main Systems with two main monitor models, matched with amplifiers from Swedish company Lab.gruppen.
As the company’s announcement says, “14 years is a long time in music production technology; nowadays it’s virtually unheard of for any product to still be the first choice for professionals that many years after it was first introduced. Yet this is the achievement of Dynaudio’s AIR series reference monitors. This is why - with exciting new products on the horizon - it has been such a difficult decision for the company to cease production of the AIR models. But the legion of enthusiastic AIR monitor users need not worry - Dynaudio’s full technical and spares support for the range is continuing.”
This the rest of the announcement:
It seems almost impossible to believe now that, when the AIR series was introduced in 2002, there was resistance in some quarters to the AIR’s digital signal path. But this was only a year after the very first Apple iPod was launched and digital audio was still a comparatively niche technology - Dynaudio was right at the leading edge of the industry.
The AIR series played its part in the subsequent explosion and widespread acceptance of professional and consumer digital audio, rapidly becoming the monitor of choice for many studios across the globe.
While AIR continues to deliver precision, accurate sound and many more benefits, the 14 years since its introduction have seen massive advances in DSP and loudspeaker design technology. Dynaudio is harnessing these to produce new state-of-the-art studio monitor ranges which will take the company, and its users, to a new level of audio excellence.
“Dynaudio is embarking on a new and exciting phase of our company’s existence, designed to keep us at the cutting edge of both the professional and consumer audio markets,” says Dynaudio CTO Jan Abilegaard Pedersen, who also sits on the AES Board of Governors.
"We already have new ranges in development and this year we are opening our new Research and Development Center, a facility that will allow us to further increase our number of development engineers and will also make new and more sophisticated sound laboratories available to us. These sound laboratories will enable us to carry out highly advanced measurements and listening sessions. These will be especially important for our professional products, as they will allow us to increase product performance immensely, making it possible to include the very latest technologies into our loudspeakers.”
“With the new R&D Center ensuring that new generations Dynaudio of monitors will enjoy a product lifespan of at least as long - and probably longer - as the AIR series, AIR users can be reassured that the company will continue to fully support the range on an ongoing basis.”
www.dynaudio.com/professional-audio
The “unusual” Dynaudio Professional booth at NAMM 2016 was no longer showing the Air Series, focusing on the more recent BM MKIII monitors and the two classic BM6A and BM15A.
