Starting an all-new Microphone brand in 2024, just why would we do this, especially in such a competitive and crowded market?
Well, in all honesty all of us here at Aim Audio have been in the pro-audio world and specifically the studio microphone space for (collectively) hundreds of years. No that doesn’t mean we’re all a bunch of “died-in-the-wool” traditionalists, but between us all at Aim genuinely has massive amounts of audio and studio microphone experience, just that we’ve always done this for others.
Collectively, the Aim Audio team really wanted to think “what could we do better”?
Our People
While our brand and factory are both proudly based in Berlin, Aim’s experience spans around the globe. The core team includes:
Bruce Davidson
President /Co-Founder
Product
Management
(UK)
James Ivey
Product
Speciallist
(UK)
Lars Hedemann
Artistic and
Graphic
Design
(Denmark)
Steve Russell
Co-Founder
Business
Development
(Denmark)
Enrico Preuß
Senior
Manufacturing
Lead
(Germany)
Rasmus Raaby
Creative
Marketing
Specialist
(Denmark)
Xavier Presser
VP of
Engineering
(Germany)
Andreas Velte
Project
Coordinator
(Germany)
Trevor Lang
Social Media
Assistant
(DE)
Thomas Gmeiner
Consultant
Engineer/
Acoustics
(Germany/Austria)
Damon Langlois
Mechanical
Design
Engineering
(Canada)
Bruce Davidson
President /Co-Founder
Product
Management
(UK)
Steve Russell
Co-Founder
Business
Development
(Denmark)
Xavier Presser
VP of
Engineering
(Germany)
Thomas Gmeiner
Consultant
Engineer/
Acoustics
(Germany/Austria)
Damon Langlois
Mechanical
Design
Engineering
(Canada)
James Ivey
Product
Speciallist
(UK)
Enrico Preuß
Senior
Manufacturing
Lead
(Germany)
Andreas Velte
Project
Coordinator
(Germany)
Lars Hedemann
Artistic and
Graphic
Design
(Denmark)
Rasmus Raaby
Creative
Marketing
Specialist
(Denmark)
Trevor Lang
Social Media
Assistant
(DE)
In addition, we constantly call on and work with on a group of highly experienced external resources in the recording studio, electronics and pro-audio worlds.
The journey begins
We started having conversations with our team about our brand in 2020.
Many of us have experience as working as musicians, producers and engineers touring live and or recording in world class studios. In addition, we have all worked on the brand side in a varied set of roles. Electronics, design, manufacturing, acoustics, procurement, sales, distribution, marketing and so much more, we’ve been there and worked for so many HUGE and respected companies in the audio world (such as Aston Microphones, Avid, AKG, beyerdynamic, Blue Mics, Sennheiser, Shure, TC Electronic, Yamaha – to name but a few).
Bringing this all together with such a diverse team in so many locations around the world, not to mention during a pandemic (!), has definitely had its challenges, plus without the realms of Zoom/Teams/Skype it would just not have been possible. However, when we started our journey, we took a holistic and yet detailed look at the whole studio microphone category.
Together, we own, use and treasure many vintage mics. We also realise that that not everyone has the luxury to be able to afford or even use many of these classics. On the other hand, our team didn’t just want to make “me too” or “copycat” products that just focus on price or look to fancy marketing gimmicks.
In the process, we found that compared to so many other products in the pro audio and musical world, studio mics are generally what you could call a “low innovation” segment. Therefore, we aspired to disrupt the microphone industry a little, by making better products and returning mass production of microphone manufacturing back to the home of condenser studio mics – Berlin.
One question that kept coming up was “why is it that so many brands seek to either always look to the past in terms of look or try to reinvent the wheel without thinking if those innovations were actually useful?”. A tall order? Yes, but with our initial models to market we believe we have gone quite a ways to achieve that lofty goal – and then some!
It all starts with GOOD design
No, we genuinely thought that whatever we came up with should gave a respectable nod to the past, while still having an ergonomic, classy and modern desirability, that just works and would stand out from the crowd.
We looked at the entire market and looked at a whole host of shapes, sizes and why things were done as they were.
After this process, we also produced a whole host of physical 3D printed models for feel, then set on the journey on how it should and could be put into practice.
While we knew it might prove to be challenging to physically convert these designs to working products, to be honest it would have been way easier and faster to do what so many others have done to just copy or modify some existing designs!
It was an eye-opening experience for all of us though, and everyone who saw the eventual results fell in love with the look, feel and balance.
Genuinely Useful Innovation
At the same time, a lovely new and sleek design is all very well, but not only did the product have to at least be as good as the best mics in our collections and if possible, exceed the competition in terms of audio quality. But we also wanted to look at what things we could add and still keep our products attainable for working musicians, engineers, home recordists etc.
The whole ethos about the Aim Audio brand is whatever innovation we bring to the market must be useful.
Very many hours were spent brainstorming what was possible and what was achievable without making a product cost a million dollars! Some ideas were obvious to us, but we really thought about this from a musician and studio engineer’s perspective, as in what makes the task of recording easier and solving practical problems, so creativity is less likely to be hampered.
Find out more details on our Technology here
Berlin
While the Aim team comes from all over the world, Berlin is not only where we have our factory, but is our spiritual home.
Every single mic is assembled, tested and calibrated by hand, in Berlin.
This is done using some of the world’s finest test equipment from NTI (today’s leaders in precision audio test gear) in our own custom made semi-anechoic test cabin.
We also use a fabulous dual-concentric speaker system in the cabin from our friends Fyne Audio in Scotland, the guys there have decades of experience in these type of speakers – highly recommended for this purpose as they are a true point souce (they sound amazing too).
Thanks for reading.
We hope you enjoy what we have created so far. This is only the start and we have many more things up our sleeves in the years to come.
The Aim Audio Team