58 l December 2013
www.psneurope.com industrytalk
“We began a collaboration with a company that makes microphones for hearing aids – did you know that a third of the world’s hearing aids are made by Danish manufacturers?” Christian Poulsen
booths, and a red light went on outside the door during recording or transmission to ensure complete silence. Now the studios are really open, with news and production staff, guests and other people moving about freely – not to mention a live audience for even the most everyday presentations. Even directional microphones
capture sound from all angles, although the off-axis rejection is better than ever. Proximity is the only workable solution: it’s not like the zoom lens on a camera, which eliminates everything outside of the frame so nothing disturbs the required image.
And you’d know all about that… I founded the first company to make commercially viable digital cameras, which was later bought by Hasselblad. It brought me into contact with Apple developers, Photoshop developers, the whole story. If you take a picture with your iPhone, you’re using a patent I invented. It certainly brought out the entrepreneur in me! But at university my Masters’
Staying
There’s been a sign on the door of DPA Microphones for a while saying ‘Under New Management’, following the departure of familiar figure Morten Støve and a reshuffle of equity holders. CEO and shareholder since 2010, Christian Poulsen brings entrepreneurial flair and considerable technical chops in both sound and picture to the new regime, as the brand with bandwidth explores an unprecedented number of new angles – both business and acoustic – at which to point a microphone.
Having ushered legendary Swedish camera marque Hasselblad into the digital era, Christian Poulsen is now zooming in on the pro-audio scene at the helm of Denmark’s high end mainstay DPA Microphones. Phil Ward says cheese…
focused
While respecting the brand’s great heritage, is there a new spirit at the company? Absolutely. We used to be well-known as the company that inherited the old B&K capsules, but today we’re a miniature capsule specialist in our own right. We still develop and produce those models, but we’ve changed dramatically in response to some key trends in the market.
Which are? Over the last 15 years we’ve seen an increasing demand for high-quality sound capture in
more and more difficult environments. Amplification is proliferating, especially in musical theatre and opera where there are several competing noise sources such as dancers, adjacent musicians, monitor speakers and so on, and the only way of improving the signal-to-noise ratio is to get the microphones as close to the sound source as possible. One of the most significant
areas where these new challenges are becoming an issue is in television production. Time was when presenters and performers were placed in soundproof
project in Electronics was to develop a new hearing aid microphone, and that experience has now come full circle. About eight years ago I was asked to become a board member at DPA, and everything came together. In pro audio, proximity necessitates small microphones but you still have the unrelenting demand for sound quality. That’s what DPA has been all about: the majority of our growth has been generated by taking full advantage of the trend towards intimate miking – which shows no signs of diminishing.
How have you taken advantage? Fortunately, being a spin-off of B&K, we already knew how to make perfect-sounding microphones. So we began a collaboration with a Danish company that makes the microphones for hearing aids – did you know that a third of the world’s hearing aids are made by Danish manufacturers? – in order to marry that expertise with ours. Even the smallest B&K capsule was too large, while their specifications had to deliver 1,000Hz to 4,000Hz. We perfected omnidirectional miniatures, and then cardioid and even interference tube models, like a shotgun. They’re at the very cutting edge of what is technically possible at
this size, such as our 4061 omnidirectional miniatures and our 4066 omni and 4088 cardioid headsets.
Presumably this trend is also behind the expansion of instrument mics? Exactly: the d:vote 4099 range.
Is there a capsule for each instrument, or a specialised mount for each instrument with the same capsule? It’s a super-neutral microphone with unique directionality, so the same mic gets as close to perfect sound as possible on all instruments. The holders are different, according to shape, size and position, but the capsules are as linear as possible. As soon as you start to tweak the frequency range in a microphone, you get phase and off-axis issues. So if the microphone is designed for relatively noisy conditions, like on stage, you can’t do that. It’s not like a studio, where the mic can change because the environment is neutral. It’s the other way round. The microphone may be optimised for saxophone, but that won’t suit any off-axis ambience.
Preachers, politicians and presenters: headset or lavalier? We always say: if you can live with a headset, use that. It offers the best possible sound because it’s always closer to the mouth. Some people feel
uncomfortable, so they use lavalier, and of course some applications have to hide the microphone completely, such as opera and certain characters in stage musicals. Hats, wigs and glasses can be very useful, though. Our biggest growth has been in headsets, because, I believe, audiences are getting used to sound reinforcement generally. We have both, available in omni and cardioid versions. But our biggest breakthrough in the last couple of years has been the handhelds: the d:facto Vocal range. It brings our quality, our linearity into the wireless lead vocal arena, and makes use of new casing for our 19mm 4011 capsule: not a normal cardioid, and not a supercardioid, but highly resistant to feedback.
Unlike DPA, which clearly listens to feedback all the time… Our customers are always right!
www.dpamicrophones.com
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