AIR6 mixes Hollywood blockbuster movies

The sound of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2' was mixed by Supervising Sound Editor James Mather at 'De Lane Lea' studios in London, listening through a 5.1 surround set of Dynaudio Acoustics AIR6 speakers. James Mather is also responsible for the sound of other major blockbusters such as 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1', 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince', 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix', 'Sherlock Holmes' and 'Clash of the Titans'.

James Mather was responsible for the entire sound design of the last Harry Potter film 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2'. Throughout the production, he was in close contact with the director, David Yates, but before the director even got to hear a first version of the audio side, a large team had already been working on the sound. "On a production of a blockbuster like Harry Potter, 13 people were working on the sound design every day," says James Mather. "Dialogue, sound effects, noise, assistants, etc., but at the end of the production, when it came to the final mix, colleagues from the visual effects and music departments joined in, and by then, the number of people involved with the audio grew to around 30."

First Choice: Dynaudio Acoustics AIR6

James Mather uses 5.1 surround setups in all of the sound editing facilities at 'De Lane Lea'. 
"When editing sound for film, we work with all kinds of sounds like atmosphere, dialogue, effects, music, sound design, etc., so we must be able to hear the entire frequency bandwidth," says James Mather as he continues. "Over the last five years, Dynaudio's AIR 6 monitor has proven itself the perfect studio monitor. It really produces a very full-bodied sound, and it has a lovely tonality in the low-range area, a neutral mid-range and highs that are neither harsh nor dominating. It really does work for all of these critical areas of film sound: noise, dialogue, sound design, effects and music."

But there is one more thing about AIR 6 that is extremely important to James Mather: "Most important of all, I can listen to the Dynaudio monitors day in and day out! The speaker does not wear out your ears. You can really go on all day without problems - and we hear a lot of sound and music during a regular day in the studio!"

According to James Mather, yet another great advantage of the Dynaudio AIR 6 monitor is its compact size: "They are mobile, and we often tend to relocate to wherever the productions are, so it is important that the speakers are easy to carry around and can be installed into any studio effortlessly."

James Mather first became aware of Dynaudio monitors while working in BBC's studio in Bristol in the late 90s. Even though the most common speakers in audio editing studios for television at that time were JBL monitors, BBC had chosen to use Dynaudio BM15 for mixing. "The Dynaudio monitor's exceptional performance in the digital domain was a real breakthrough," recalls James Mather. "You did not have to use an A/D converter, and the result was an extremely clear and transparent sound."

Ultimately, James Mather has come to prefer and rely on Dynaudio speakers for one very simple reason: "For a sound engineer it is crucial that you can really trust that what you hear is as close to reality as absolutely possible. That is the only way you can achieve your goals and deliver the desired results. It's really as simple as that!"