K IS THE NEW J
Over a tall glass of weissbier in Stuttgart, d&b’s Head of R&D Acoustics (née prophet), Mathias Christener, tells me he saw this day coming a good 12 years ago. Not that he’d be downing a few frothies with some Aussie in a hotel bar, but that way back in 2006 — just after he, and his team, delivered the J series line array — he could already see exactly where they needed to go next.
J series was, of course, a massive success for d&b. Engineers loved how it sounded, but crucially, it made investment sense. It was light — about half the weight of V-DOSC — and its passive crossover network only required a single amp channel to operate.
All great stuff, but Matthias’ mind was already looking over the horizon at the defining feature of d&b’s next large format line array — immaculate directivity. He could envision a future where pattern control didn’t have to be limited to the mid range and top end of the frequency spectrum. That it could extend down to the last two octaves of human hearing.
Having an idea is one thing, achieving it was going to take time and laying a number of stepping stones along the way. The first step wasn’t hardware at all, it was software. R1
