The Back Story

My last posting about the Klark-Teknik DN-100 reminded me of a behind the scenes story about another great new KT product, the Square ONE Dynamic, that you probably haven't heard.

In order to get to the beginning of the story we actually need to start with another new product, the MIDAS XL8 digital live performance system (you do know about the XL8 right - you have been paying attention to this blog haven't you - I'm just checking).

In the beginning of the development of the XL8 system a seemingly easy decision, with far reaching implications, was made about the performance of the new system. It was decided that first and foremost that the XL8 had to live up to the MIDAS name in all aspects including it's sonic performance. So the sound of all that new digital goodness had to equal or exceed the best that the analog world had to offer (audio is analog after all). They already had the worlds most respected analog desk and through their sister company Klark-Teknik the industry standard equalizers to use as models but in terms of dynamics they came up a little short. So they began looking at products from other names in the industry that had gained large followings.

Not content to just copy some other product they forensically dissected the most promising candidates to determine just what made them so popular and what they could do to make them even better. Remember, all of their digital manipulations are modeled on analog technology, so they created the worlds most versatile dynamics circuit that included ideas from the best in the analog world and then added a few of their own. Once they had perfected that circuit they gave it to their digital engineers to emulate. The analog circuit served as a reference for listening tests to ensure the accuracy of the digital emulation.

This is where the Square ONE Dynamic comes in. It's still going to be some time before analog gear disappears and they had, after all, just created a killer new dynamics processor. Someone on the team had the foresight to suggest that they release it as a stand alone product. So they slapped eight channels into a rack unit and released it as the Klark-Teknik Square ONE Dynamic and the rest is history.

And now as Paul Harvey says "You know the rest of the story."