AudioMedia - December 2008 - (Page 54) STEPHEN BENNETT presents a birthday cake to Neumann with 80 candles. That’s a big cake. And a big history for a microphone manufacturer that has seen the best part of a century at the very top of its game. t’s the nineteen fifties, and we’re in a studio somewhere in the good ol’ US of A. An icon is in the making – perhaps he’s an actor and a film star – and he’s standing in front of a microphone waiting for the tube to warm up. The engineer gives him the thumbs up and he lays down the vocals to a classic track that wows them in the aisles even today. Fast forward to the ‘ s. Four mop-topped boys are ensconced around the same silver microphone model in a laboratory-like studio somewhere in London, England. The white coated technician puts the spanking new four track tape machine into record and another musical legend is born. The microphone is the Neumann U , a tube-based I Neumann Celebrates classic that is still revered today as possibly the finest vocal microphone ever made. Today’s stars in the ascending are often found to be belting out their passionate statements in front of the Neumann classic (before they are Autotuned to death), and it’s still the first choice of those lucky enough to have access to the increasingly rare mic. Of course the company isn’t just about one microphone – many of Neumann’s products over the years have found friends in the recording and live sound areas, and the much-imitated U is probably one of the most ubiquitous sights in studios around the world. To many, Neumann is the microphone company, and this year, , it is eighty years old. 80 Years The M iddle Years The Early Years radio broadcasting, founded the company on November . Improving on his early designs, its first product was the CMV ‘Bottle’ microphone. This large condenser, with separate capsule and tube-based preamplifier sections, remained in production until the end of the second world war – albeit with improvements, such as variable polar patterns and exchangeable capsule heads. The success of this microphone was demonstrated by its use in the Olympiad in Berlin and the fact that its design is much imitated today. Though Neumann is mostly known for its microphones, other early successful products were a disc cutting lathe, and the rather more unexpected fields of gas-tight batteries and capacitance cells. In the company created the product that would go on to bring the dulcet tones of Frank Sinatra and the weird warbling of Kate Bush to the world – the aforementioned U . “Neumann were always known for technological leadership, and these legendary products made their way into all the well known recording studios,” says Wolfgang Fraissinet, President of Sales and Marketing. The story of the Neumann microphone began in Berlin, Germany, in . A young engineer, Georg Neumann, fresh from his experimentation with early capacitor microphone designs and his experience in using them in The U microphone was the first switchable pattern condenser microphone and its convenience and sound quality meant that it rapidly supplanted the thenstandard RCAs ribbon studio microphone. Its unique design featured a dual diaphragm capsule with adjustable omnidirectional and cardioid patterns. The company went from strength to strength, developing many microphones over the years that are now considered ‘must haves’ by many recording studios, while the remote-switching M , the KM , and stereo SM , brought the company into the emerging worlds of television and stereo recording. > 54 AUDIO MEDIA DECEMBER 2008
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.