Recording - August 2017 - 32

Aston

Starlight

The laser targeting system is only one of
this pencil condenser mic's innovations
REVIEW BY PAUL VNUK JR.

hile Aston is a relatively new microphone
company, having launched barely two years
ago, it's definitely hit the ground running. This
is not surprising as the core members of the
company were behind the success of sE Microphones.
Since forming Aston, the UK-based team has brought to
market a lineup of microphones that are significant for
offering their own sound while being highly affordable and
handcrafted on British shores. Only the capsules are Asian
sourced; everything else is proudly made in the UK.
The ever-restless James Young and his team are not content
to make same-old-same-old mics, and so far each Aston model
has featured unique design elements from their tumbled stainless
steel bodies to Wave-Form Mesh heads and more. My
reviews of the large-diaphragm Origin and Spirit models can
be found in our April and December 2016 issues respectively.

Starlight, laser bright

This month we look at Aston's newest microphone, the
Starlight-the firm's first small-diaphragm pencil condenser.
The Starlight offers something old, something new, and even
something a bit futuristic.
At first glance, the Starlight looks like a lightsaber prop from
a Star Wars movie. That impression comes not only from its
overall profile, but also from the elongated black plastic ridge
running along the mic's length. That ridge houses the Starlight's
laser sight. No, that's not a joke; the mic actually has a builtin red laser diode, used for aiming the mic accurately and
reproducibly at sources by "painting the target" with a bright
red dot. It's a real Class II laser, and while it's nowhere near
powerful enough to burn your skin, you should be very careful
not to point it at your eyes, or anyone else's.
This idea is not without precedent; audio engineers have
been known to use lasers to aim their microphones. However,
this is the very first time a mic has come with one built in that
runs off of phantom power. As cool-looking as it is while setting up and checking your sound, you should turn it off before
actually recording; the laser circuit adds unacceptable noise
to the signal.
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RECORDING August 2017

Very sinteresting

The Starlight is made from the same 1.5mm 4-hour-tumbled
stainless steel as its LDC brethren, complete with an enamel
Aston logo Badge. The body is tapered on the XLR side and
the cable jack sits partially recessed into the mic body.
Aston also continues its use of unique head grille designs on
the Starlight. The Starlight doesn't use metal mesh or springs
like the Origin or Spirit; it has a sintered grille, a form of technology that comes from the distant past (the old AKG D190e
comes to mind). While Aston didn't invent this technology, the
team did a lot of research to bring it into the modern age.
According to Wikipedia, sintering is the process of
"compacting and forming a solid mass of material by heat or
pressure, without melting it to the point of liquefaction." In the
Starlight's grille, thousands of tiny spheres are sintered together
to create a porous metal that acts as a natural pop filter of sorts.
The Aston engineers "tested many thicknesses of sintered head,
as well as the average size of the sinter spheres, and combined
that with nickel plate which is controlled to only a few nanometres
thickness to achieve near perfect acoustic porosity."
The sintered grille houses a 20 mm cardioid capsule. The
capsule is threaded and removable, but Aston has no current
plans to offer alternative capsules with other polar patterns.

Electronics

The Starlight is an all-discrete transformerless design. The
cardioid element is a pressure gradient capacitor design with
a 20 Hz - 20 kHz (±10 dB) response, an equivalent noise
level of 15 dBA, a Sensitivity of 42.1mV/Pa (1 kHz into 1 kΩ),
a max SPL of 130 dB without pad, and a signal-to-noise ratio
of 79 dBA.
Below the laser are four function switches on the sides of the
body. The first one controls the on-off setting of the laser. Next
is a 3-position pad switch (-20/-10/0 dB for a true maximum
SPL of 150 dB), a lowcut filter with choices of 80 Hz or 140
Hz, and finally a voicing switch with a choice of Vintage,
Modern and Hybrid settings.
Looking at the Starlight's frequency graph explains the voice
settings well. Overall the mic has a virtually flat response from
150 Hz up to 5.5 kHz. In Vintage mode the mic retains this
neutrality up to about 12 kHz and then rolls gently off; in
Vintage mode the low end is also gently boosted. Moving to

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - August 2017