Austrian Audio Joins DPA: Pro Audio Suite Series 8 Premiere

You are any history story. Welcome to the pro Audio Suite. Thanks you guys, a professional and motivator. Thanks to try Booth, the best vocal booth for home or on the road voice recording and Austrian Audio Making Passion Herd. Introducing Robert Marshall from Source Elements and Someone Audio Post Chicago, Aaron Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging Sydney to the Video Stars, George the Tech Whittam from La and Me, Andrew Peters Voice Ober Talent and Home Studio Guy. Be out. And welcome to another pro audio suite, and welcome to twenty twenty five. Thanks to try Booth, I think the code still works, tripap two hundred that will get you two hundred dollars off your try booth and Austrian Audio Making Passion Herd. Well, well, well it is twenty twenty five. Austrian Audio, being a great supporter of us, have now been purchased by Danish microphone company called DPA. I saw that this morning, So if you're listening to this month's down the Track then you're probably going, yeah, that happened month, mainly. Something to give that company credibility. Well it's interesting because the DPA is like really sort of right up there when it comes to super high quality microphones, and they make it like really small microphones. Yeah. Yeah, and only microphones, not headphones as well, which is kind of interesting. And also they're probably more targeting film. Yeah, I was going to say Austrian Audio is probably more musical in terms of their stuff as opposed to where DPA is more broadcast specialty. Yeah, I don't. Know, man. DPA is very well known in like classical music too, like the Oh By Far like those, Like if you're recording a high end orchestra, there's probably a DPA make there. It's like some of their instrument makes for you know, piano and the Little Teeny Love sort of adapted also for instrument use there. They're very much on stage in. The orchestra with chefs, right. I don't see DPA in the studio as much as where you don't see DPA. Look, I'll be honest, I hadn't heard much about DPA at all. They were sort of a brand that I'd heard of, and when I saw the the you guys talking about it on the email this morning, I went and them by B and k Okay yeah, well there you go. So I went and had a look this morning, and at first glance that was my sort of take on it as Wow, they seem a bit more broadcast specialized than the musical stuff that that sort of Austrian Audio was doing. But when you start talking about it that way, well. It does make sense because it's like if that they're now they're covering quite a lot of territory where you know, Austrian Audio focused mainly on music, where now that with DPA, I mean, the two companies combined, they've got pretty well everything covered from you know, forensic microphones to lav microphones to boom mics, and now they've got the Austrian Audio brand to throw it. You coul probably whether they actually do merge. Yeah, you could probably argue that Austrian Audio is a little more going. There are some products in the Austrian Audio range that's a little more consumer too, I suppose. Yeah, DPA never never went down to that level. And even in the mics that might be similar, like the OC eight, the DPA small diaphragm microphones are like two thousand, five hundred dollars each and the specs are insane. They're basically measurement microphones coming from their B and K lineage, and then the Austrian audio mics are a little bit more attainable. I mean, what's what's a pair of OC eight eight's cost eight like maybe maybe they're. Few or C C gates? I think you mean, don't you the C C. Eight the condenser, the small diaphragm connencer like five. Piece pencil condenser. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah C eight yah. DPA even has a drum microphone kit which has a very complete drum making up right kick everything. It's five g's. Ohgz o G. That's right exactly o G. Yeah, yeah, that's nothing. Because one fascinated me. You could spend that on a pair of overheads with them. True, sure, But the one that fascinated me and I sort of watched a couple of videos. The Curtis guy was doing a shootout between a four one six and there twenty seventeen shotgun mic. So they've got two shotguns, they've got a forty seventeen and a twenty seventeen. He put up the twenty seventeen against goingst the four one six and you could hear the difference. I mean, the the twenty seventeen from DPA was more natural in it sound as opposed to the hyped forty one six, and I don't think it's as directional as the forty one six either, So because I was kind of curious to see if that would be a really good alternative to a four one six for voice over. It may be, but I wouldn't necessarily use it on the road. I'm guessing. I had a quick look at their shot guns. They're not nowhere nearest hyped as the forty one seeks what is true, I know, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, I would. I would think that they wouldn't go for any hyped stuff. I think they kind of pride themselves on being the definition of flat. I mean, honestly, when you look at a lot of microphones. I was over at Sure for example, and what measurement microphone were they using? They had. They had a BNK mic, which is basically a DPA MIC that they were measuring their microphones against. Yeah, yeah, wow, they're kid. There're DPA decatry this around s fives around slash Decatry Mount fourteen. That thing is amazing. It looks like a head crab or some kind of creature. But actually it looks like a drone because it's got except it's got five different mic points on it. But yeah, I mean this is and this is for really kind of money is no object kind of production. You know, classical film things was quite hefty budgets, and so I'm sure they don't see the Austrian Audio line as really being stepping on their line that much, you know, So it makes sense, and I'm sure austrain Audio is feeling feeling the crunch the last two years, giving out, promoting, touring, going to events that stuffs super expensive and you know, I'm sure they've got some VC money that needs to get paid back to so it's all it's all expensive running these companies. So I can see. I mean, I'm glad that they're gonna this kind of thing will allow them to stick around. You know. Well, I was gonna say, there's not a lot in a sense, even though they're both microphone companies, there's not a lot of overlap. DP does not have anything like OC eight one eight, for example, and you know, maybe the only one that slightly overlaps is the C C eight sort of but not because also I think that introduces you know pencil mics to a price point that DPA never really approached essentially for their pencil and small diaphragm microphone. So I think it's a fairly complimentary lineup that they can entertain some new and different customers and get some large diaphragm stuff going on. I would personally like to try out one of their headset mics to see if it's quality. I mean, the quality of the mics are not an issue like that is for sure not a problem like those. Their small capsule mics have been used on film sets a plenty. The one movie that came out a number of years ago that really really showed off DPA mics and how good they are was The Limb is do. You think their headset mics sound like this? One? Much better than that? So they what they did in that film was they prioritized getting the sound on set above all. It's really fascinating. I should find that article, but it I heard the interview with the gentleman who was the production sound mixer on that film, and he somehow won a battle where they decided that we want to get live sound on set for all singing, everything's in sync, nothing is dubbed, and so that means even when they were getting medium and wide shots, they would still have a lab mic on costume, not in costume, but on costume and digitally painted out so they could have that mic in the perfect spot. So when you see people singing in that film and they shoot these, they had these I saw in the theater they were leaning into these ultra close up shots of people singing. So it's like a head felling the entire screen, singing for like a minute straight, and you're like, this is awkward, But it's because they weren't lip syncing. They didn't have to worry about sync. It was flawless because every singing, all the singing on the set was recorded live. The only thing that will not live was the very opening sequence of the film. It's like a sequence that's in a ship dock, you know, and it's a it's the sea is it's It was much too noisy on set, like there was wind machines and it was chaos, you know, And that's dubbed. But everything else is actually live and it was all done with DPA Mike's so quality is not a problem. Self noise would be the issue. Those little micro capsules have a relatively high self noise, So I'm really. That's the whole thing with any mic in theory, the smaller the mic, the more accurate, but the noise floor goes up. So your large diaphragm condensers are quieter, but they theoretically start to have phase issues because one end of the capsule is doing a different thing than the other end of the capsule. The whole wave hits it. The whole capsules like the wave. So what is the perfect intersection of you know, sensitivity, accuracy and self noise, Like, what is the. My lab tries it. My lab tries to do this with rectangular capsules. So they claim that the small dimension is the is the small diaphragm, and then the large rectangular part is the large diaphragm, and they claim that's sort of like the hybrid of the two approaches. But well, I don't know. It's funny you say about the rectangular because I noticed that DPA of the micro capsules are rectangular from what largely? Are they just rectangular in the in the frame of it or the actual I don't know. I just had a quick run through the site and I was looking at the manufacturing of their capsules, and it looked to me like that were the micro capsules were rectangular. Like the forty sixty, the forty sixty one, those little those little guys are rectangular. You can't tell from the outside because it's got a round grill on it. No, those are those are a circular because I have a like a forty zero. I have the the Omni that takes one hundred ninety two volts instead of forty eight volts, and that's definitely around capsule. So the ones I I was looking at the video and I could see the manufacturing and it looked like to me it was a rectangular capsule. So they do actually give the spec for the equivalent noise level, and it's about twenty sixty B. So compared to really any studio might that would be quite high. Compared to a handheld stare like a handheld live condenser or like this one. This is CC. What's this thing called the O C seven zer A seven that's the MIC I'm one right now. That is relatively not that far off actually in terms of self noise. So these things are much smaller diaphragms and they're still eking out some impressive. Self noise numbers. So yeah, the number that gave way was the price. Yeah yeah, well yeah, these these these little forty sixties started five hundred dollars. And of course that's just the capsule period. You still need to get the preamp, you know, or the connector the body, the body that plugs into your whatever it is, a body pack or whatever. The interface is. Right, So not as bad as I thought it would be to be, frank, five hundred dollars for something that's really the top of the food chain isn't too crazy. So so they. Kind of fool like DPM. It must fool somewhere like the ships in that kind of area. Do you think they are? Yeah, there there may be. SCHEPS maybe has a reputation for being a little bit more musical and DPA may be a little bit more scientific, but I think that comes from dpa's original history of being a measurement microphone with when they were B and K. But you know, it's funny. Look at Mike W from China and then look at how they completely ripped off dpa's grill. Oh really, yeah, they get away with a line over there, and they really do. I'm having a look on the DPA website. They've got some really cool blogs and one of them, what's this one called twelve fun ways to use miniature microphones, and there's a whole bunch of them. They're showing like they've got a sweatband on a guy with the tambourine, and they've got the sort of the lavaliers sort of stuck through. Their recording the thing. But one of them a bit further down the page, they've created a figure eight with two omnis and it says sometimes it's fun to experiment with extreme directionality of microphones. For instance, you can create a figure of eight characteristic by connecting two miniature omni microphones to one input. All it takes is that the microphones have a balanced out puts with they don't, however, you've you use an next lur adapter. You can apply two identical miniature mics and phase invertera on one of them, and then the two signals have a passive summing device. Add the two signals using a passive summing device and you basically make a little figure of eight using these two little omni lavalim very clever. You can do really neat stuff when the MIC's that small. But yeah, I'm looking at their inside step inside the DPA factory, and yeah, the very first shot is like an exploding view of one of those small capsule mics. And while the grill is circular and the body circular, actually what's inside there is a rectangular capsule it comes. Out of ahead. It's fascinating. Yeah, it's a little little rectangular capsule. Really wow. Yeah, Well there's a metal frame around the capsule, but it's hard to see what's inside that metal frame. I can't have been ever brave enough to try to open my mic up, so. I really don't want to. I'm very surprised. Yeah, it's very cool though. Yeah, the film is really neat. I would definitely recommend to go to the DPA Microphones dot com slash our Dash company and there's a really really great little documentary their factory. I mean, it's the ultimate of quality and precision for sure. I hope it takes you know, Austrian Audio well into the future and that they can stay a viable company for a long time instead of getting bought by a giant conglomerate like you know that ended up buying getting bought by Samsung. Which was the fate of a KG. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't move down market. I think they moved with a company that's gonna give a crap and not just be like how many did you sell? Yeah, I mean they will care, but they will very much want to keep the quality and the and the soul of the company. I think, yeah, absolutely. You know, they probably met with the team at Ostro and audio went hey, these guys are kind of smart. Yeah, and sort of on the same thing thought level as they are. So yeah, yeah. Interesting, Well we should watch this page. Fine? Is it over. The pro Audio Suite and Austrian Audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peaters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging tech support from George the Techdom. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and joining the conversation on our Facebook group to leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say today drop us a note at our website dot com.