Neumann MA 1 Automatic Monitor Alignment System

Neumann MA 1 Automatic Monitor Alignment System

The Neumann MA 1 is an automatic alignment system for Neumann studio monitors: an individually calibrated measurement microphone and software that measures your room, computes a correction, and stores it inside the DSP of your monitors. The result is monitoring you can trust in rooms that were never built as studios – which is most rooms.

The calibration algorithms were developed jointly with Fraunhofer IIS, the institute behind much of modern audio processing. Unusually, the MA 1 corrects both amplitude and phase: it flattens the frequency response the room distorts and aligns the timing, which sharpens stereo imaging and the accuracy of transients. The target curve is room-adaptive and can be adjusted to taste, rather than forcing one fixed ideal on every space.

Key Features

• Automatic alignment for Neumann KH DSP monitor systems
• Individually calibrated measurement microphone included
• Amplitude and phase correction – algorithms developed with Fraunhofer IIS
• Room-adaptive target curve, adjustable by the user
• Correction stored inside the monitors – no plug-in, no special driver, nothing to load per session
• Optimises subwoofer integration when a KH 750 DSP is in the system
• Guided measurement process – no acoustic expertise required

How it works

Connect the monitors to your interface as usual, link the DSP monitors to the computer by Ethernet, and connect the MA 1 microphone to a mic input. The software guides you through measurements at and around the listening position, derives the room’s acoustic behaviour from the data, and writes individual correction parameters into each monitor. Because the correction lives in the speakers themselves, it applies to every source – DAW, console, streaming – with nothing running on the computer.

Which systems it aligns

The MA 1 works with stereo setups of KH 80 DSP monitors (with or without a KH 750 DSP subwoofer) and with pairs of analogue Neumann monitors – KH 120, KH 310 and KH 420 – connected through a KH 750 DSP, which lends them its processing. If you already own Neumann monitors, the MA 1 is the upgrade that makes them measure – and sound – the way they were designed to.

Full technical data for the measurement microphone – frequency range, sensitivity, SPL handling and dimensions – is listed in the specifications table on this page.