Yes, it is an often-used cliché for many products and brands these days. Now, while we love vintage and classic mics (the team at Aim own and cherish several fine examples), much of the studio mic industry can seem, to us at least, like it just wants to follow the same path as many of these vintage examples. So, with stellar audio performance and aligned to a beautiful sleek and modern design, we looked at what genuinely useful innovation could bring to the world of studio microphones.

Let’s look at all of those new features in detail.

Despite all the fancy tech wizardry that we have innovated and integrated into our mics, the sound all starts with the capsule.

At Aim Audio, we developed the Aim sound by carrying out a number of double blind tests with a team of leading studio engineers, musicians, artists and audio professionals across the world. Along the process and to find out what style and tonality worked best with our custom electronics, we also compared each of these tests by ear and included checking these results randomly, against some of the most popular and best competitor mics on the market.

Our handmade, externally polarized, dual 1” capsule features a 6 micron gold-sputtered genuine Mylar diaphragm, isolated brass backplates with the finest quality tensioners and a customized ring connector. We also use Teflon coated wires, as this improves the S/N ratio to our own and separate Hi-Z electronics. It really is a work of art.

Many mics are just plain darn hard to read when setting up on dark and moody stages or in studios, where you often want to get the best atmosphere for a performance. We thought about how best to change this, so the LED backlit controls on INSPIRE make it easy to see exactly what settings the mic is set to, at a moment’s glance. They’re also completely powered by regular 48V Phantom Power – no extra hardware is required!

While we think that LEDs are cool and want to show them off, we totally understand that not everyone will want to see them on all the time or potentially distract an artist from a performance. We have you covered here, as all of the controls can be easily dimmed to three levels or even turned off. This makes INSPIRE a perfect ‘invisible mic’ for video, calming studio environments or in live settings.

You can also easily lock the buttons too, great if you want to stop performers from “fiddling” or to prevent accidental changes while moving the microphone’s position.

You know how it goes, a perfect take ruined because you didn’t spot the mic was peaking and causing input distortion. Well despite the electronics of INSPIRE being capable of 140 dB + of internal headroom (that’s louder than a jet taking off above your head!), very many mic preamps are just not capable of either taking anywhere near that kind of level or even sounding great if they do. Which is why mics generally have pad options on them, to help reduce the output level.

While the average source should not present an issue, loud amps, drums or even singers with the odd peaking transient can distort your input. So, to help you better catch these short overload peaks before they damage recordings, we fitted a simple Peak Level meter to INSPIRE. The LED will flash Orange when the level is approaching the ‘danger level’ and will go Red when it hits around 128 dB*. Even though INSPIRE should not distort internally at this level, as this is at source it makes it way easier to set the -10 or -20 dB Pad controls and will help you make better distortion free recordings, no matter what kind of kit you are using.

The mic also has switches for a Low Cut Filter at 80 Hz and a gentle Roll Off Filter at 110 Hz. These are useful for helping to reduce wind noise, close proximity effect or even vibration, assisting you to get the best sound possible for your recordings.

INSPIRE is equipped with an integral direct-to-stand mount thread in the base of the microphone, which makes setting up in tight spaces a breeze. Aim’s custom capsule holder is also made from the best Anti-Vibration material – Sorbothane®, meaning it will protect your takes from most knocks and bumps that could ruin a recording.

But for the initial launch of INSPIRE and for the absolutely best shock-mounting experience, we’ve included ORBIT, our revolutionary patent-pending multi-position Shock Mount and the SENTRY magnetic Pop Filter, as part of the package.

We’ve all been there – with many shock mount designs they are fiddly, hard to adjust and a pain getting the exact angle you need for the mic to be pointed at your source. Not to mention that, with some of these designs, you also don’t always have the confidence that your precious mic is secured firmly.

Well ORBIT is no ordinary shock mount and as it is so easy to use and setup, you’ll wonder what you ever did without it.

Just like with our microphones, ORBIT has had years of development in working out how to make a better shock mount. In addition, to get closer to sound source and to make the controls on the microphone easily accessible (especially when the mic is in the cradle), we settled on a half-open/open front design.

From the easy to use and secure sliding clamping mechanism, right to the type of suspension, everything has been developed from the ground up. With many man hours of physical testing, we also decided on rubber rings as the best shock mounting material, rather than use the regular elastics that have become the traditional and most common way to suspend a mic cradle.