Austrian Audio - Martin Seidl

Welcome to the Sound On Sound People and Music Industry podcast channel. In this episode, we discuss innovation in microphone and headphone design with Austrian Audio's Martin Siedel. Welcome, Martin. Welcome, Sam. Thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure. How are you? I'm good, personally. And, uh, as we are in a special situation here, uh, we are connected via the internet and not seeing us in person. So Uh, but I'm good, thank you. Yes, it's very much a shame that we can't talk face to face, but I'm sure everyone will understand that in the light of current circumstances. So I was wondering if we could start by talking a little bit about Austrian Audio, the company. It'll be a new company to many people, but it does nevertheless have a very long heritage. Can you tell us a little bit about this background? Yeah, um, well, you know, basically, um Many people know, uh, famous name in the microphone and headphone business, uh, that, uh, was based in Vienna for more than 70 years, um, and I mentioned it only once, which is AKG, uh, and, uh, the company was closed, uh, mid of year 2017. This, uh, due to several takeovers, I mean The company was owned by Harman anyway, and now Harman was sold to Samsung. Uh, and so many of the headquarters and, and the factories were closed down all over the world. So was AKG headquarter in Vienna. And, uh, when I heard about that, I worked for this company for many years. I worked for Harman 16 years and I thought, uh, we can't let that team go because, you know, you can hire people and you hire good people, but you never can hire a team that. It worked together for such a long time and is experienced. So we found some investors and, uh, at the end of the day, we founded Austrian Audio on the 1st of July, 2017 with, uh, now we are 43 people of which 33 are former AKG employees. So that's the heritage and that's also the experience we bring into this new company. And about yourself, uh, do you come from that engineering background as well? Uh, not really from an R& D engineering, uh, background. Um, I was a user. I graduated, uh, right after high school, uh, from the University of Music in Vienna as a Tonmeister, so a sound engineer. Um, I worked a lot in studios. Uh, I was Making a lot of music myself. So that's my music and audio technique background. Uh, but later I got some education in, in global business management. And so my background is more sales marketing and business administration. Now, the first Austrian audio products were a pair of microphones based around the CKR 12 capsule, which is an updated version of AKG's classic CK 12 capsule. Now, the original CK 12 was apparently extremely difficult to manufacture consistently. Uh, can you tell us a little bit about why that was the case? Well, several reasons for that, really. Uh, the, the original CK 12, and we're talking about the Original, original, uh, that was, um, made, uh, first in the fifties and sixties of the last century. Uh, they were made of brass and, uh, it was, there were a lot of, um, let's see, factors that could influence, uh, the production of a healthy capsule that started with the electrode that, uh, had to be micrometer plane. Uh, then it came to it. that, uh, the, the tensioning of the ring or the tensioning of the membrane had to be extremely Um, even and smooth over the whole surface, uh, at that time, uh, laser measurement was not available. And the major part was, of course, the brass, uh, which, um, you know, is, is a great material from the weight, from the, from the mass and, uh, of the, of the material. But it had, uh, I don't remember, was it 18 screws, uh, to equally. Uh, span the ring and, um, so there were times when only two or three capsules left the factory per day in the old days. Um, the rest was, um, basically, um, not thrown away, but rebuilt and, and, and, and remanufactured. Uh, why CKR 12? It's because we, uh, changed the material, uh, Uh, there were versions of the old CK12 capsule in between where the rings were made of plastic, which wasn't a bad solution for the manufacturing, but it didn't really meet the old, uh, sound reproduction. And our really target was to reproduce this heritage sound where the mid height and the height are smooth and still transparent. And there is a lot to the weight of the capsule that contributes to that sound. And some other stuff, to be honest, uh, which the heritage knowledge was in house, um, but the material was not invented yet. So, um, This, uh, ceramic design is also patented, uh, now it's a granted patent, um, which is filed in the United States as well. And so, yeah, I mean, the target definitely is the old sound, but more consistent in production and more consistent over time, to be honest, because ceramic is a material that doesn't change, that doesn't corrode. It's a perfect isolator, so you don't have, uh, electric shortcut issues when moisture comes into play. This is one of the major issues you had with vintage microphones all the time, taking them from a cold van into warm studio. And you had this sizzling noise, uh, which took, uh, uh, sometimes two, three hours when the temperature had, uh, cleaned up, uh, the moisture out of the capsule. So when we're talking about ceramic, are we talking about the back plates being made of ceramic? No, we're talking about the, the ring that holds the membrane. Understood. So the backplates are still made of brass, which is drilled with holes, but it's the ring that holds the membrane of the ceramic, and that can hold the membrane in perfect tension. Exactly. The backplate, uh, is still made out of brass, uh, with drilled holes, but of course it's also a bit easier to make them completely plain, which is a very, very important factor. And, uh, the membrane material is still gold spotted Mylar. So that's like the original, but the rings are made of ceramic. So the tensioning is, is more even. And, uh, again, uh, the production is, is, uh, more continuous and, and, and easier. Some people would say that part of the sound of the classic AKG mics is down to valves and transformers. You've chosen not to use those in the OC81 and the OC818. Why not? Um, let me put it that way. Um, to start with, you had to have The, the capsule and anything that comes after that. So the electric circuitry, um, is, is a different factor. Uh, valves, um, would. Probably create the, the typical sound of a C12 microphone, which was a valve microphone and, um, you know, never say never, um, it's not said that we won't use the CKR12 capsule to build a brilliant valve microphone as well, um, in this case, uh, it is a large condenser and, uh, transformers, um, are not needed to, uh, or in fact, are even, um, Opposing to get, uh, sensitivity and self noise to a level that you can take them, uh, uh, with a transformer less version. And how much difference do factors such as the shape of the head basket make to the sound of a microphone? It does a lot, and, uh, that's again what, uh, what Austrian Audio considered very, very carefully. Um, Basically, we all know that the ideal world would be that the capsule flies in the empty space and you have nothing around it. That would be the perfect acoustics, the free field acoustics. Now, um, as you, uh, see with the OC 18 and the OC 818, uh, the basket is extremely large. That's to have as minimal reflections from anywhere inside the microphone. So if you, if you would open up an OC 818 or an 18, you would even see something that is completely new to the industry, uh, on the bottom of the microphone where you Usually and always had, uh, a plate, either metal, but most of the time a plastic cover of the electronics. Uh, we have a diffuser implemented. So even at the bottom of the microphone does not reflect any, um, usually 6. 57 kilohertz, uh, noise back to the caption. The OC818 is not a digital microphone as such, but it can be digitally controlled. What are the benefits of this? Yeah, um, I think it's very important, and thank you for the question. Uh, yes, it's not a digital microphone. And the danger always was, and we were aware, that if you, if you implement something digital, people Um, very quickly and easily refer to it as a digital toy under inverted commas. Um, it's a full analog microphone and, um, the remote control, uh, is really, really useful for, for various applications. point one, um, in a, in a life, um, setup, for example, where you use it as a. Let's take the example of an orchestra or a choir as the major two stereo mics, which are up there on, uh, closer to the ceiling or, or higher up or three, four meters high. Um, you can remotely change anything on the microphone. You can change the patterns. If you probably have too much of the room. In your recording, you can change the patterns to become more like hypercardioid, less of a, of a omnidirectional pattern, uh, without, uh, having to, um, you know, have a step ladder and go to each microphone and change those patterns. Uh. Yeah. The other very big advantage, which I personally, as I worked in studios, love most is in a, in a studio environment when, when you have a singer or performer in the recording room and, uh, you don't know exactly how a microphone, uh, works with that particular voice or instrument and how your room probably picks up nice, uh, tensions of the, of the voice or the microphone. Um, Uh, in my early days, of course, you tried different patterns. You walked into the recording room, stopped the performance, changed the pattern, walked back to the mixing desk. Now you can basically sit at the mixing desk and experiment while you rehearse, while the singer is singing, um, with the patterns. Uh, you can even apply, um, high pass filters or you can apply, um, the attenuation pads without interrupting the creative process. And that's so awesome. So great that you that you just can You know Experiment with a voice or with the instrument you have in the recording room Fantastic and you've actually gone beyond that with the OC 818 because like most large diaphragm capacitor microphones It has back to back cardioid capsules, but you can actually record the output of both sides separately And then you can use a plug in called Polar Designer after the fact to create polar patterns that aren't really available in conventional microphones. Can you explain some of the advantages of this? Yeah, I mean, it's again, it's a very, very, uh, I would say, uh, tool for creativity. Um, The reason behind there is, is, is multiple really, if you record both capsules, you can, as you said, after the event, decide if you want the microphone to, um, perform as a, I don't know, hypercardiac, cardiac or omni, uh, um, And you can again experiment with the sound of the instrument. Um, but with the, with the polo designer, we took it one step further and we worked with the music university in Graz on that. Um, you can not only. In the mixdown decide, uh, how much voltage goes to which capsule, so basically change the overall pattern, but you can now in the plugin divide your whole frequency band into five different, uh, frequency bands and can define a pattern. per frequency band. Let's take an example. Uh, you recorded a snare drum, just a simple one, and you have a spillover of the hi hat, which you most of the time do. Um, now in earlier days, you would have to filter the high frequencies out of your frequency band or of your recording to eliminate the sound of the hi hat. What you can do now is you can basically define the frequency band where the hi hat spills in, leave all the rest of the frequency bands, let's say as a Uh, white card yet, something like that to have a rich, um, body full snare and only in the high midst where the, where the high head spills over, you turn the pattern into a hypercardiate and more or less blend away or, or beam away from the spilling. So that's a complete phase linear process, uh, which is very important on, on, on recordings as well. So really going beyond what's ever been possible with traditional analog microphones, are we going to see further development in the digital field in future? Um, we are working all the time on, on the, on the plug in of course, and, uh, as we have decided to make this an open source, uh, software. Uh, point one is, uh, downloadable free, uh, of charge from our webpage. Point two, we get a lot of input from, from, from users, from developers. And so we're working on that, uh, of course, uh, in a direction where, uh, you know, simple was the stereo pairing and, and, and then we are, we are also working on, on new updates. Um, details are not yet available, but, uh, yes, you will see more development in that. particular, uh, area, but of course, as I mentioned before, we are mainly a microphone company, microphone and headphone company. So we are acoustic guys, uh, acousticians, and, um, you will see more products, of course, with the CK 12 capsule and, uh, a wider portfolio, uh, with microphones using that capsule. But of course, AKG weren't only known for the CK12 capsule and the microphones that used it. They were also very highly regarded for their small diaphragm capacitor mics and also their moving coil dynamic microphones. Do you have any plans to develop in these areas too? Uh, we do, and, uh, we have already developed, uh, a very similar product to the CKR 12 in a smaller format, uh, which is now in prototype, uh, phase. And you will see, uh, very high quality, small condenser mics, uh, coming from Austrian Audio, both for studio and for stage, because, uh, what we believe in is that you are. How shall I put it, uh, every sound engineer deserves studio like tools also for stage, uh, in the sound quality. So what you have seen in the past and you will see in the future, we're absolutely sticking to the true condenser format. So, um, we are not going to backplate, uh, electrode capsules. Um, This is the next step. And for the dynamic capsules, well, you know, it's a little bit further ahead, but we definitely don't stop here. Let's say we are using a lot of experiences we've made in the past. The nice thing on that is, uh, you know, with every development, you do mistakes. And, uh, as we have, uh, Uh, I once calculated it, it was more than 400 years of experience in house now with microphone and headphone development. We will not make the same mistakes again, but we definitely will use our experience from the past to make great products. Wonderful. So let's turn now to headphones. You followed up the OC Series microphones with your Hi X headphones. The Hi X name is short for Hi Excursion. Can you explain what that means? Yeah, it's, it's pretty similar as we did it with the microphones, you know, you always have to start with the heart that creates the sound in the microphone. We really thought, let's not fix it in the mix and, and, and try to, uh, you know, smoothen it out later. And, and, and it's the same with the headphone drivers. Uh, we looked around, um, Okay. We are, um, not so keen with, uh, the concept of going larger and larger and larger because, um, marketing, especially in the, in the lifestyle, uh, but also in the pro, uh, headphone market tend to advertise larger diaphragms all the time, 50, 54 millimeters. Um, I understand the concept of moving enough air to reproduce low end sound. Um, but if you go very large, um, the diaphragm becomes slower as well. So you, you, you get to the low frequencies, but sometimes it's not as precise as a professional would wish these low frequency to be. So our concept here was we have designed a 44 millimeter driver ourselves. Which is, uh, created in a completely different way with a lot of magnets. It's a kind of a ring magnet system, uh, in the driver, uh, that allows us, uh, much higher excursion with the driver. And, uh, hence we're moving the same amount of air as a much larger driver. So for 55 plays down to five Hertz, which will be sufficient for most of us, I guess. Um. But it moves much quicker and much preciser than large drivers do. So that's the concept behind this, uh, first headphone range we have launched, um, with the new driver. So the idea is that the diaphragm in a Hi X driver has less momentum or inertia than it would do in a larger driver so it can respond more swiftly to transients and so on. Exactly, exactly. And apart from that, uh, it has a nice side effect that we get, uh, more air movement, uh, to the coil and, uh, no matter how hard you drive it, uh, it absolutely, uh, stays the same in performance, even if you play it very hard for a long time. Now, both of the Hi X models that are available at launch are closed back designs. There's one on ear model and there's one over ear model. Many people say that open back models offer sort of the best fidelity, especially for mixing. Do you agree with that? Yes. Um, there we are again with, uh, what I said with the microphones, of course, in, in, in an ideal world, we would have, uh, an open acoustic, so, uh, as open as possible. It's about practicality. If you look at what kind of headphones been sold over the last decade, I would say, it mainly tended to closed back headphones. So our target was to get as close as possible to an open acoustic reproduction with a closed back. Why? A lot of headphones are used a, of course, uh, in the, in the recording room where you don't want any spill in and any spill out into the microphone. And that was our first target and focus with the Hi X 55s. Uh, secondly, a lot of people are using them also. Um, On the go, so they need to be portable. There's a lot of pre productions and idea creation done on tours in your hotel room where you need closed back headphones. Um, I would dare to say they are very, very linear in the reproduction so you can use them. For rough mix, uh, and mastering. But of course, um, open back headphones for, for mastering will be the better solution in the end, yes. You're using a lot of digital technology in your microphones, albeit not in the core element of the microphones. Um, some manufacturers are also introducing digital processing into headphones. Is that something you've explored too? Um. Yes. Again, you know, you have to be very careful. Our customers Uh, widely spread between, let's say traditional and seasoned engineers who would not want any digital in the audio path. And then of course you have, uh, the, the wide range of upcoming urban musicians, producers that very much, uh, uh, are. Let's say, uh, receptive also for digital, um, DSP ing in the audio path. We are definitely, uh, considering that. And you will be surprised with, uh, other headphone products that will come to market from Austrian Audio. There, uh, there will be digital built in. I don't want to say the details right now, uh, because there are. Cool features coming up, which will make the headphone a real musician's tool. Uh, maybe for recording, maybe for even rehearsing your instrument. Wow, well, I shall hold my breath in expectation. So, obviously, as we spoke earlier, um, times are very difficult at the moment, both for musicians, but also for manufacturers. Uh, are you managing to keep the factory open? Yeah. Um, we are very, uh, you know, aware of the situation and we are extremely cautious in regards of, uh, security and safety for the staff. So, uh, we have of course moved as much as possible out into home, our home office work, all the admin and, and, and, uh, you know, sales marketing, uh, finance, whatever you can move out. But yes, we are still manufacturing, uh, as we are. We're still a boutique manufacturing here in house. We have opened up extra space, made more room available for the production line. So we could split up the team into larger spaces where you have. at least three meters distance or four meters distance between each operator. And secondly, we have a change to shift production. So, uh, to keep as few people as possible in the house at the same time, but we are still up and running. Austrian Audio, as well as making your own products, also offer research and testing services to other businesses. Um, can you tell us a little bit about the work you do in that respect? Yes, um, we have invested quite a lot into our equipment here because if you want to go to the edge of what's doable in acoustic, you need the measurement equipment. Uh, we have our own department for, for measurement and calibration. So, uh, these people develop. Uh, end offline measurement and calibration tools for our own products, which is very important because, uh, you, you need to have full control over the quality, uh, when you go into production. Now, as we have those resources in house, uh, we are offering to third parties, uh, two different things, really. A, um, we have, um. other pro companies or even, you know, audio designers from automotive industry coming to our house using our measurement and echoic chamber facilities. That's one part and the other part really is as we have decided for the moment not to go into lifestyle business at all with Austrian Audio. We help some quite known or well known lifestyle brands with their developments in headphones. This is a completely different field and, um, Frankly, for a smaller startup like Austrian Audio, it's quite difficult to compete with the large lifestyle brands, uh, which by the way, these days are not only lifestyle brands anymore or not acoustic lifestyle brands anymore. Headphones are made by companies who made computers and telephones in the past. So we are not playing, uh, as a, as a provider of products in that field, but we are supporting some of these brands. Uh, Doing let's say a good job in making lifestyle headphone products fantastic Thank you so much Martin one last question if you had to sum up What makes Austrian audio different and what makes Austrian audio special? I think What what Austrian all you makes different in the market is we are a team that? Really brings a lot of experience to the market But we are now in a completely new setup and I, I dare to say unleashed from certain, um, corporate requirements. Um, we are not, uh, really, uh, urgently requested to make huge amount of, of, of profit. We are reinvesting everything into research and into new products. And so, uh, we can allow ourselves to. Not bring a product to market that hasn't at least one or two absolutely tangible benefits for the user. Um, I'm not saying we have to reinvent the wheel all the time. We don't have to bring new technologies to the market all the time. If you look at the OC818 for example, large condenser microphones have always been there. We have improved. Uh, the capsule with all the knowledge we had, that's one bit of it. And then we have dared to bring Bluetooth into a professional microphone. We didn't invent Bluetooth. We didn't invent large condenser microphones, but we brought two technologies together with an idea of a workflow that wasn't there and that brings huge benefits in the workflow, both live and recording. And we tend to do this with every single product. If we don't have. a benefit if we don't see a difference that it makes to the user, we don't make this product. Well, I for one can't wait to try out some of the new products that you've got in development. For the time being, I'll let you get back to developing them. So thank you very much, Martin Seidel of Austrian Audio. Thank you very much for your time, Sam. And I'm looking forward to talking to you next time when we have the new products there. 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