Antelope Audio Edge Family Modeling Microphones

Antelope Audio has released a new iteration of their Edge family of modeling microphones. They have the Edge Solo, a large-diaphragm condenser designed to recreate the sound of cardioid-pattern single capsule microphones. The Edge Duo, a large-diaphragm condenser designed for capturing vocals and instruments, and captures independent outputs from the capsule's dual membranes. The Edge Quadro, a one-of-a-kind stereo microphone with two dual-membrane capsules and a rotating upper head, capturing four channels of independently processed audio! Now that was a lot of big words, but basically they have 3 microphones with varying levels of capability - each has their own niche application depending on what you're recording.

If you've never heard of modeling microphones, you're probably about to be blown away. I'll give you a basic description of generic microphone modeling:

• First, you start with a high quality microphone with a flat and known frequency response.

• Sometimes they will include an interface or preamp, that also has a known response. For the Edge family they don't require a specific interface, but they do recommend you use their interfaces for best results.

• A software plugin knows the microphone and hardware characteristics, so it can apply some DSP (digital signal processing) magic to simulate many other microphones. This can be as simple as an EQ application, a certain amount of compression, or as complicated as physically modeling the structure of the microphone and how the membranes interact.

So why would you want this? Well, it allows you to buy a single high quality microphone that you can turn into many high quality microphones through software modeling. I'm not sure who started this idea, but Slate Digital has a line of microphones that also do this (and Antelope Audio has done this before as well).

You can actually get plugins that claim to simulate certain microphones, or will put certain effects on to give a certain vocal tone, but the problem is that they don't understand what hardware you're using. How can a plug-in know if you're using a $99 Shure SM58 or a $2,000 Neumann? Both will have completely different raw sounds and will render any simulation through software completely useless.

This is where the Edge microphone family and mic modeling comes in. For $1,095 (for the Edge Duo) you get a very nice microphone, so even if you don't buy into this modeling magic you still have a quality product you can use. The list of included emulations is quite impressive:

• BERLIN 47 FT

• BERLIN 49T

• BERLIN 57

• BERLIN 87

• BERLIN 67

• BERLIN M103

• VIENNA 12

• VIENNA 414

• TOKYO 800T

• OXFORD 4038

• SACRAMENTO 121R

• BERLIN K86

• BERLIN 47 TU

• BERLIN V563

• BERLIN/HALSKE M25

• BERLIN M251

• MINNESOTA 20

• ILLINOIS 7B

This allows you to record your audio once, and simulate many different microphones in the box to get the best sounding recording possible. In the past you'd have to rent or own many expensive microphones to do this, and record them all separately - so in a way getting a modeling microphone will save you money if you're into this sort of thing.

What about all those big words about dual-membrane capsules and rotating heads? Well microphones sometimes have more than 1 membrane that is responsible for turning your beautiful voice into an oscillating voltage for your audio interface to pick up, ordinarily these different membrane oscillations are combined into one signal that gets recorded. Antelope Audio is allowing you to record them all separately, which increases the realism of the simulation. This is important because different microphones will combine membranes differently, or have them placed differently inside the capsule - so it can theoretically improve the realism quite a bit.

I don't think I can adequately describe the applications of a stereo microphone, but I do know that sometimes audio engineers will set up two microphones in certain configurations to achieve a particular sonic image. Antelope's Edge Quadro microphone can simulate these dual microphone situations. Plus it looks absolutely incredible (as do all these microphones).

I don't own this microphone so I can't personally speak on the quality of the emulation, but they do have many sound examples on their website. To me they sound great on their own merits, but it would take a very thorough comparison from someone who actually owns the real version of these microphones to talk about the accuracy of the model. I find the area of microphone modeling to be very interesting, and I imagine that over the years the models will continually get better.

If you look on YouTube for comparisons at this time you will only seem the old iteration of the Edge. It will probably take some time for people to review and compare this in detail, but in the mean time here's at least the announcement video from Antelope Audio.

Check it out and see if its for you!