Hires

All prices are exclusive of VAT. Minimum hire is one week, with a minimum charge of £100. Discounts will be automatically calculated for hires longer than one week. Hires are available to UK customers only. Delivery and collection are extra: smaller items can be sent by post or courier; larger items can be delivered by courier. If you have any questions or special requirements feel free to email me.

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I want binaural sound for my project - but should i record in binaural or ambisonics?
Click the arrow to the right to find out more...

It depends on your project. Recording in binaural sound provides a great recreation of the world, as a human being might hear it if they were there. However it is a fixed perspective recording- whichever way the binaural head was facing when you recorded it will be the way the listener experiences the sound. This is perfect in many applications, however increasingly we are creating "virtual reality" like experiences, where the user can look around. This might be a film taken with a 360 degree camera, or a computer modelled space, and the user might listen to it using a VR headset or by moving their mobile phone around. In this case we don't want a fixed perspective recording, we want a way that the perspective of the recording can follow where the user is looking. Not always but sometimes. Let's take a simple example, if the user is in an auditorium looking at a stage with a performance happening on it, we want the perspective of the audio to have the stage in front of them. But if they look to their left, the stage will now be on their right, and we'd likely want the audio to appear to come from the right too. A binaural head pointing at the stage will always have the sound coming in to both ears. An ambisonic mic is typically a 4 channel microphone, that records sound from 4 directions. In the same way a 360 camera uses multiple cameras to generate a 360 degree view of the world, so an ambisonic mic does the same for audio. The clever bit is what you can do with an ambisonic recording after you've made your recording. You can generate a binaural simulation from the ambisonic recording, and you can choose in software which way your virtual binaural head is facing. And in fact most of the VR platforms now include software which will import an ambisonic recording and based on where the user is looking will generate a binaural simulation in real time. So if they look to the left of our auditorium, the sound will binaurally pan to the right. However ambisonic recordings rendered into a binaural simulation don't sound quite as good as a real binaural recording. The imaging isn't quite as dramatic. So it's a choice of flexibility & being able to rotate (ambisonics), versus a fixed perspective but one with a dramatic rendition (binaural)..

Binaural Microphones

Neumann KU100 binaural head
This is one of the best sounding binaural mics available. It is robust and practical to use, with microphones internal to the head. There is a 5-pin XLR on the bottom of the head, with a lead supplied to break out to two XLR plugs. There is a mic stand thread on the bottom and top of the head, and it can be stood on most mic stands - it is heavy, so care is needed. The mic is powered by standard phantom power (48V).

Recording (hand-held) a Cessna in-flight

Recording (hand-held) a Cessna in-flight

Ambisonic Microphones

Sennheiser Ambeo microphone in Rycote Babyball windshield
This A-Format ambisonic microphone is ideal for field recording of 3D sound. Sennheiser provide free plug-ins to decode this microphone to B-Format ambisonics. Records to 4 audio channels. This microphone works on a similar principle to the Soundfield SPS200 microphone. Supplied with 1.5m cable, 5m extension cable and breakout cable to 4x XLR.

Soundfield SPS200-SB in Zephyx windshield

This A-Format ambisonic mic is ideal for field recording of 3D ambisonic sound. Soundfield provide free AAX, AU and VST plug-ins to decode this microphone to various surround and stereo formats. It has a slightly quieter noise floor than the Ambeo and Rode ambisonic microphones. Supplied with Cinema Zephyx windshield and 3m breakout cable to 4x XLR.

Manufacturer page

Telinga Universal parabolic microphone mount 

This is a special type of microphone mount, designed for very long distance pickup. You see it used a lot of recording birdsong, for long distance surveillance and for atmos at sporting events. The compromise you get for such directional sound is that they don't pick up much low or mid frequency sound. Am omni mic is inserted into the centre of the parabolic mount - I use a Rode NT5 with the replacement omni capsule.

The Telinga model is useful in that it rolls up which makes it a lot more portable if you're going to be doing a lot of walking. You'll notice a variety of stress fractures from being rolled up, and various dents, but these don't affect the sound.
Manufacturer page

Featured Conventional microphones

DPA 2011C compact microphone, available individually or as a matched stereo pair.
These make awesome float mic's due to their extremely small size, low noise and excellent feedback rejection. They are also great as an XY pair for stereo recording, or individually to mic up instruments.

DPA2011C as float microphone. They are much smaller than they appear. You can almost see that they are about the same length as an XLR connector.

DPA2011C as float microphone. They are much smaller than they appear. You can almost see that they are about the same length as an XLR connector.

Neumann KM184 microphone, available individually or as a matched stereo pair,
Excellent for stereo recording, or individually for mic'ing string instruments or anything with a fragile beautiful nature!

Neumann KMS105 microphone
Excellent live vocal mic. A superb colourful sound and hypercardioid response makes for good feedback rejection. Once you try this you'll never want to use an SM58 again!

Aquarian Hydrophone H2A-XLR
Hydrophone for underwater recording, 9m cable length.

Conventional microphones

Microphone rigging

DI Boxes

Consumables