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When building an immersive mixing system, your two biggest investments will be your speakers and your monitor controller—so put your best foot forward and choose high-quality, trustworthy products that won’t let you down.
When it comes to the two most critical elements of your system, Ex Machina Soundworks and Dangerous Music make a great pair. Ex Machina offers a range of professional monitors in various sizes and price points, all featuring coaxial drivers for point-source spatial accuracy and phase coherence. Dangerous has been making advanced surround monitor controllers long before Dolby Atmos entered the arena, and the brand's MONITOR-SR expansion unit makes it possible to control large speaker arrays with ease.
This guide will help you select the ideal Ex Machina monitors for your setup, hook them up to a Dangerous monitor controller, and calibrate the system for optimal performance and accuracy. So let’s get into it!
Ex Machina makes a variety of active and passive monitors for nearfield, midfield, and farfield applications, but they’re all based around a cohesive design philosophy that’s ideal for immersive mixing.
All Ex Machina monitors feature coaxial mid- and high-frequency drivers made of space-age Metamodal TeXtreme carbon fabric, providing superb sensitivity, accuracy, and time coherence—all critical specs in immersive audio. All models (except the compact Titan) also feature custom SEAS woofers, which deliver extremely accurate, low-distortion performance. Additionally, each individual unit receives a full calibration at the factory, ensuring +/- 1 dB linearity and +/- 15° phase response across the frequency spectrum.
This emphasis on consistency, along with a cohesive design aesthetic, makes it possible to mix and match any of Ex Machina’s monitors in your immersive setup. Whether you need a compact, high-performance setup or simply want the best possible performance, Ex Machina has you covered.
Although it’s the smallest monitor in the range, Titan is one of the best options for immersive setups. This small but mighty 6.5” cube weighs in at just 12 pounds and features integrated VESA mounting points, making it ideal for tricky ceiling or wall installations where other monitors simply can’t fit.
Titan’s coaxial driver combines a 5.5” woofer and a 1” tweeter, providing extremely accurate point-source sound from 80 Hz to 30 kHz. With a max SPL rating of 106 dB, Titan puts out enough power to accommodate dynamic Atmos mixes and loud, compressed stereo mixes.
As a passive loudspeaker, Titan relies on external power from the Ex Machina Lunar Core: a 2U amplifier and DSP unit capable of powering up to four Titans. Titan monitors are sold exclusively in sets of four with a Lunar Core module, or as part of Vintage King’s Ex Machina Atmos Studio Monitor Packages.
Even in large immersive mixing systems, the left, center, and right channels typically see more use than the surrounds or overheads. If you need maximum power and performance for the critical front channels, the Ex Machina Quasar MKII won't let you down. In fact, Ex Machina Atmos Studio Monitor Packages 2 and 3 each feature three Quasar monitors for exactly this purpose.
This three-way active monitor features a central 7” coaxial mid- and high-frequency driver flanked by dual 9” woofers for impressive accuracy even at high levels. According to Ex Machina, “The axisymmetric ‘sub-coax-sub’ arrangement also provides an even more coherent hemispherical wavefront, for superior integration at all frequencies, and at any distance or angle within the 90×90 conical coverage.”
At 29 inches long and 77 pounds, Quasar justifies its size with incredible performance. The coaxial driver boasts an imperceptible 0.1% THD across the 2-10 kHz band, while the long-excursion woofers achieve superb low-end output with minimal distortion. All in all, Quasar exhibits +/- 1 dB accuracy from 29 Hz all the way up to 32 kHz, with a max SPL of 114 dB. Though large, its slim profile is ideal for horizontal mounting in the center position without being obscured by computer monitors.
The Pulsar MKII is Ex Machina’s “bread and butter” active monitor for nearfield and midfield setups. Featuring the same coaxial driver assembly as the larger Quasar with just one woofer, this three-way active monitor delivers nearly as impressive performance in a smaller cabinet with a more traditional layout.
While Quasar is most practical for the front channels and Titan is designed for overhead mounting, Pulsar is equally suited to any listener-plane position. Ex Machina Atmos Studio Monitor Package 1 features three Pulsars for the front channels, but you can easily replace some of the Titans with more Pulsars for extended frequency response and output.
Measuring +/- 1 dB linearity from 35 Hz - 32 kHz with nearly perfect phase response, the Ex Machina Pulsar MKII easily delivers the kind of full-range performance you need to meet Dolby’s recommendations for Atmos studios. And, with a max SPL rating of 110 dB, it’s got plenty of headroom for mixing anything from music to film and TV soundtracks.
Ganymede is a dedicated nearfield monitor suited to smaller immersive setups. Sporting a similar layout to the Pulsar (but smaller), Ganymede features a smaller 5.5” coaxial driver and 7” subwoofer that provide linear frequency response from 45 Hz to 30 kHz and a max SPL characteristic of 106 dB. At just 30.5 lb, this model is 40% lighter and several inches shorter than the Pulsar, making it more practical for small rooms.
The Ex Machina Ganymede features the same advanced materials, electronics, and DSP as the Pulsar and Quasar, so you won’t be sacrificing any quality if you choose this model—all you lose is a bit of output and low-end extension. Coming in at the lowest price point of Ex Machina’s active monitors, Ganymede makes it possible to build a high-performance immersive rig on a modest budget.
Thanks to Ex Machina’s design consistency, Ganymede is ready to mix and match with the other models in an immersive array. Ex Machina Atmos Studio Monitor Package 3 features four Ganymedes as surrounds to complement the full-range Quasar front channels and compact Titan overheads.
Dangerous Music makes a range of professional studio tools, but they’ve long been known as a top name in monitor controllers. Since 2007, the Dangerous MONITOR-ST system has been a fixture on many studio desks, and the MONITOR-SR unit expands its functionality to accommodate multichannel surround and immersive systems.
You’ll need one MONITOR-ST and remote controller as a base unit, plus a MONITOR-SR for every four channels you want to add. For example, a 5.1.4 system would require two expansion units (for a total of ten channels), while a 9.1.6 system would require three (for a total of 14 channels). These units also provide internal routing for bass management, even in dual-subwoofer (X.2.X) setups.
The MONITOR-ST system consists of an audiophile-grade rackmount monitor controller and a desktop remote that puts all of the necessary functions at your fingertips. The base unit supports five stereo input sources and three stereo speaker outputs, plus a dedicated headphone output and an integrated talkback system with a built-in microphone and external mic input.
The desktop remote sports an ergonomic volume control dial and illuminated buttons for muting and dimming, toggling the talkback mic, switching sources and outputs, loading presets, soloing individual speakers, and more.
The Dangerous MONITOR-SR pairs with the MONITOR-ST to offer four additional channels. Although originally intended for surround workflows, the unit was designed to be used in multiples, supporting large immersive arrays such as 9.1.6.
MONITOR-SR units connect to the MONITOR-ST via multichannel ribbon cables, sending all of the input and output signals to the right destinations without making you do any complicated manual routing. The MONITOR-ST also features Ethernet In and Thru ports to enable the desktop remote to control the entire system. See the video below for setup instructions.
There’s no question that Ex Machina studio monitors and Dangerous monitor controllers are great choices for building an immersive mixing rig. The only question is this: what does your ideal immersive setup look like? Will you seek maximum performance with the powerful Quasars and Pulsars, go for efficiency with an all-Titan setup, or mix and match models to meet your own unique needs?
If you’re ready to start building your immersive rig, reach out to a Vintage King Audio Consultant to get the best prices on Ex Machina and Dangerous gear, or stop into one of our showrooms to try it out for yourself. If you’re just getting started in your immersive journey, see Upgrading Your Studio For Immersive Mixing to educate yourself about the various immersive formats, figure out how many speakers you’ll need, and learn how to set it all up.
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