Recording - February 2013 - 48

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Emotiva Pro
airmotiv 4 and airmotiv 6 Powered Studio Monitors
A new line of speakers brings the sound of the ribbon tweeter to a wider audience
Emotiva Pro announced its airmotiv line of speakers in 2011; these powered monitors are sold direct from the company and cover a range of sizes and applications to fit many studios and personal recording setups. There are three airmotiv monitors currently available: the airmotiv 4 with a 4.5" woofer, the airmotiv 5 with a 5.25" woofer, and the airmotiv 6 with a 6.5" woofer (among other differences). For this review we got to try out the airmotiv 4 and airmotiv 6. What’s with that tweeter? The most obvious feature of the airmotiv speaker is its tweeter. This is a folded-ribbon transducer of the sort pioneered as the AMT (Air Motion Transformer) by Dr. Oskar Heil in the early 1970s. Several companies around the world manufacture variants and improvements on Dr. Heil’s original design—our Lorenz Rychner recently (January 2013) reviewed the latest such speakers from ADAM Audio. The advantage of the folded ribbon is that it packs a huge surface area into a very small space, and it’s very lightweight and so responds quickly to changes in input voltage. A well-made folded-ribbon design will have very accurate transient response and extended high end, and that’s why many pro users love having them in their speakers. There will always be technical arguments as to what tweeter works best—a ribbon, folded ribbon, or dome, silk vs. beryllium vs. other materials—but listening tests bear out the effectiveness of a well-made tweeter of this type. In common We’ll first cover the many features that the airmotiv speakers have in common. The folded-ribbon tweeter is set into a waveguide/mounting plate above the woofer, and the cabinet features a single rear-facing port and offers bottom-surface attach points for an optional mounting bracket (or stick-on rubber feet—we left these off our review speakers, as we were using them with IsoAcoustics ISO•L8R155 and ISO•L8R200 isolation stands in all evaluations). All airmotiv speakers are biamplified with active crossovers, and feature two rearpanel adjustments to help them perform at their best in your particular room. There’s a high-frequency “tilt” control with a corner frequency of 4 kHz and settings of +2/0/–2 dB, and a low-frequency rolloff to compensate for placement near walls or corners, with a corner frequency of 150 Hz and –4/–2/0 dB settings. Connections include either unbalanced RCA or balanced XLR on the rear panel, and a standard detachable IEC power cable (only two prongs used, there’s no ground). For this review we used the balanced connections. The power switch is on the rear of the cabinet, but there’s a front-panel level potentiometer ringed by a blue power-on LED. The level pot is spring-loaded and can be pressed into the body of the speaker and locked to prevent accidental changes in level, but Emotiva Pro recommends that users of audio interfaces and consoles set these controls to maximum and leave them there, controlling input level
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RECORDING February 2013

from their other audio equipment as is standard for most powered monitors in a studio environment. (By the way, the owner’s manual—available as a free download from the Emotiva Pro website—has an extensive and well-written tutorial on speaker placement in a variety of applications.) Different The airmotiv 4 has a 26 x 32 mm folded ribbon and a 115 mm (4.5") polypropylene composite cone; its amplifiers provide 25 W RMS each to the tweeter and woofer, and it has a 2700 Hz crossover frequency. Its rated frequency response is 58 Hz–23 kHz (±2 dB), 6 dB down at 52 Hz and 27 kHz. The speakers are a very compact 9.4 x 6.1 x 7.3 inches and weigh a hair over 10 pounds each; they’ll fit just about anywhere you’ll need them to. The airmotiv 6 has a 32 x 60 mm folded ribbon and a 165 mm (6.5") polypropylene composite cone; its amplifiers (cooled by large rear-panel heat sinks absent from the airmotiv 4) provide 100 W

Recording - February 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - February 2013