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A world class sound designer with world class Dynaudio Acoustic Air20 speakers!

“A mix developed in my sound-design suite will translate accurately to any dubbing stage or screening room.”

Designing sound for motion pictures requires a rare combination of art and science. To paint a picture for the ear involves a deep appreciation of how sound affects people in ways that can suggest a range of emotions, while the manipulation and processing of audio signals involves access to the sharpest tools in the toolbox. For leading practitioner Christopher Boyes, accurate playback monitoring is a key ingredient to his success. “I have been using Dynaudio Acoustics AIR 20 monitor loudspeakers for several years and like the smooth sound that I get from them.
I have a tremendous amount of confidence that a mix developed in my sound-design suite will translate accurately to any dubbing stage or screening room.” For many years this Oscar-winning sound designer and re-recording engineer has worked at both a number of leading post-production facilities around the world, and his own personal-use facility in Inverness, Marin County, Northern California.

Boyes was most recently nominated this past year for an Oscar® for his outstanding work in Ironman, and has won Oscars for Best Sound Editing on Pearl Harbor and Titanic, in addition to Best Sound Mixing for King Kong and Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King. His current projects include Lovely Bones and Avatar.

“I love the sweet sound produced by these Dynaudio AIR speakers,” Boyes continues. “The warm sound means that I am not working with a harsh and brittle response that you get with some other monitors – with the AIRs you take that distraction out of the mix.”

“My AIR speakers push me as a sound designer because I need to bring out subtleties in critical elements. I can work with confidence and know reliably the tracks I produce will sound good elsewhere - wherever I take them.”

Unusually, Boyes has mounted his array of AIR 20 Active Reference Monitors upside down at his private editorial and mixing facility, where he uses six self-powered AIR monitor arrays with three up-front for left, center and right, and three behind as LCR surrounds for EX-format 6.1-channel mixing. A companion BM 14S Active Subwoofer houses a single 12-inch driver.

“I prefer to use the three-way full-range AIR 20 speakers when they are mounted fairly high on stands, above the video monitors. That configuration, which was designed and laid out for me by [local acoustician and room analyzer] Bob Hodas, works very well for me," the sound designer offers. “Also, the 20's unique design with built-in D-to-A converters means that I can feed them from my Synclavier keyboards, for example, or a DVD, or directly from the 48 kHz digital output from my Digidesign Pro Tools|HD digital audio workstation. That is a very flexible option that I wouldn’t get with other brands of monitors.”

Boyes also uses another product from the TC Group: A TC Electronic Reverb 6000 Processor. “I use the 6000 all the time to create realistic-sounding ambiences and reverberant spaces,” the designer states. “I love the range of multichannel spaces I can call up from the factory and user presets, including Reflector, VSS3-Series and a whole raft of other user-friendly algorithms.”

Chris Boyes got his first set of AIR monitors while working on “Pirates of the Carribean”, and they haven't left his studio ever since.

Within six years of his graduation from the cinema school at San Francisco State in 1985, Chris Boyes had broken in the rarified world of Hollywood feature films. Starting as a Foley recordist for 1991's “Backdraft”, Chris quickly moved up to sound designer and re-recording mixer on a string of blockbuster films including "Mission: Impossible", "Titanic", "Armageddon" , "Pearl Harbor", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Minority Report", "Mystic River" and all three Lord of the Rings films (2001-2003). Along the way Chris Boyes picked up seven Academy Award® Nominations and two Oscars® for sound editing on "Pearl Harbor" and "Titanic" and the Oscar for Best Sound for "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King".

Sonic clarity and immense power
As a sound mixer he most recently worked on 2004's "The Weatherman" starring Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine, and "Sky Captain" starring Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. When Chris isn't mixing on a dub stage somewhere around the globe, he settles into his comfortable studio in Marin County, California, equipped with AIR speakers, of course! Chris purchased his first set of AIR loudspeakers for his work as sound designer, supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer on "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl".

“The AIR series fits perfectly into my vision of what a monitor system should be”, says Chris, " The AIR speakers give me honest sonic clarity with immense power and an integrated technical design that simplifies my life in the studio.”