(Last updated 03/24/2008)

Pro Audio Review magazine awards its PAR Excellence award to TetraMic

At the 2006 AES Convention in San Francisco, Pro Audio Review magazine selected TetraMic to be one of 38 recipients of the 2006 PAR Excellence Award.

John Leonard, the respected sound designer in London (U.K.), wrote:

I did my first real session with the TetraMic a couple of days ago; a last-minute informal concert recording for an up and coming string trio in a local church with almost no time to set-up or check. After the recording, I burned a stereo CD for the group with basic post-processing and got an almost instant "Wow!" as a first response from them; then I set up for a 5.1 surround decode and the results are jaw-droppingly good. Localisation and definition are superb with all the detail of the venue faithfully captured along with the passionate playing of the musicians.

I bought this microphone primarily because when I'm not working on theatre shows, I'm out making recordings in all sorts of situations and locations and lugging my other system around was becoming a bit of a chore, so I'm looking forward to the arrival of the 4Mic pre-amp and a full surround system that I'll be able to take anywhere, without having to worry about excess baggage charges or incipient back strain. It's an excellent advance in recording technology and I'm extremely impressed.

Hugh Robjohns, Technical Editor, Sound On Sound magazine in the UK wrote:

I was very impressed with the Tetramic -- it is well manufactured and easy to use, and its compact size is a real bonus."

J.O. wrote:

This is a great mic. I am thoroughly pleased.

...I can say that the TetraMic is much clearer and cleaner than my ribbons. I can't wait to get to a good organ recital in a place I have recorded before.

Great job...

Paul Hodges, an Ambisonic microphone veteran from Oxford (UK), wrote:

The first impression, of course, was how tiny it is. I'm surprised at how small it really is - even after seeing the photos (the box is seriously nice, too)! I also have only listened in stereo, and only on headphones at that, but I'm very pleased so far. The sound is clean, and the extended bass is remarkable (once I used phones that went that low!). It's the first time the basses in the choir have sounded OK in the low registers (we don't have any really low basses) - there may be an element of acoustic reinforcement because the choir was placed hard against the back wall (well, in front of the organ). Not having to play about with equalisation is a great relief too; and there's clearly more bass than even my equalised mics were finding.

... over the main part of the frequency range all the component outputs are extremely flat; their on-axis curves are flatter than those of my AKG C414s...

Not a lot more to say, really - it just works, and works well; and what more can one want? I am very pleased indeed.

See http://www.ambisonic.info/tetramic.html for a full review.

N.F., a soundscape designer in Australia, wrote:

...The recording session using Tetramic (and MOTU Traveller and MacPowerbook) last month went extra well. I love the mic and was very impressed by the way it handled the very windy conditions out at the airfield.

D.H. wrote:

...very good sounding stereo decodes with a wonderful spatial resolution... I can hardly wait to start using the TetraMic more often.

Later he wrote:

Thanks for the TetraMic, it is quite wonderful all by itself and will be even more useful with the 4Mic...

Fons Adriaenson, one of the world's audio DSP gurus, analyzed TetraMic's performance and wrote:

...Actually, almost no classical (non-tetrahedral) directional mic would have a LF response and LF polar diagrams as good as this one.

...the results are really excellent, and much better than what could be achieved with analog A-B processors [as used by SoundField]. Note the perfect matching of the responses for the two directions, for both the omnidirectional and the first-order components, and also between them. This is confirmed by looking at the other directions.

Near-perfect omnis may exist (most still have a 'preferred' direction), but no real figure-of-eight mic will have such accurate polar patterns [as TetraMic] over almost the entire frequency range.

This means that after calibration this microphone is not only an excellent Ambisonic mic, but that it will also be a very good one for stereo recording.

S.T., a TetraMic user in France, wrote:

TetraMic sounds great. I've recorded different soundscapes. I've got very good results.

Recording Magazine's December 2006 issue said:

... but we may as well spoil the surprise and let you know right now about the hands-down cutest new product at the [AES] show: the Core Sound TetraMic.

That photo isn't retouched -- it really is a four-element microphone for in-place surround recording that's a bit larger than a ball-point pen. There are four 12mm (roughly 1/2") cardioid electret condenser elements arranged in a tetrahedral pattern...

This pocket-sized surround recording setup is one of many cool field-recording devices from Core Sound, which has a decades-long history of providing high-quality and very portable location recording solutions.

Electronic Musician magazine wrote:

Core Sound held the buzz of the show with its TetraMic ($TBA), a "tetrahedral" mic for ambisonic recording. The mic has four small capsules on a metal shaft and is shorter than a pencil. The company says the price will be under $1,000. Core Sound also announced the 4Mic ($750), a handheld, battery operated preamp and A/D converter, compatible with TetraMic, that will give you four discrete outputs or a matrixed 2-channel signal that can be decoded later. The preamp provides 10 mA of 48V phantom power. The company expects to ship 4Mic in November.

David Battino, on O'Reilly Digital Media, wrote:

At every trade show, there's one product everyone says you have to see. The gadget that kept coming up at last month's AES conference was the Core Sound TetraMic.

This tiny microphone contains four capsules arranged in a tetrahedral pattern to pick up sound in the Ambisonic format. Basically, the mics together encode front-back, left-right, up-down, and level information that can later be presented in a variety of ways. According to Ambisonic.net, the technique produces a 3D audio image -- including elevation information -- that's "largely unaffected by listener position." In other words, with just four speakers, you hear a true surround recording, and there's no sweet spot. The four channels can also be decoded into conventional two-channel, 5.1-channel, 7.1-channel, and other speaker systems.

Before now, Ambisonic mics cost thousands of dollars. Core Sound expects to sell the TetraMic for less than $1,000. But the other breakthough is that when paired with Core Sound's 4Mic analog-to-digital converter (also under $1,000), the TetraMic can record the Ambisonics information to a standard two-channel flash-RAM recorder like the M-Audio MicroTrack. So for about $2K, you'll soon be able to carry a versatile, handheld surround recorder in your fingertips.

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