Neumann.Berlin SM 2 User's Manual
Contents
1. NEUMANN gt gt THE MICROPHONE COMPANY SM 2 The First Neumann Stereo Microphone In the mid 1950 s the recording and broadcasting indus tries made major breakthroughs in the development of stereophonic sound recording and transmission Neumann has supplied technical equipment to the recording indus try since 1928 and in 1955 introduced a novel editing device for their industry standard disc cutters In 1956 a cooperative venture with the record label TELDEC re sulted in the first stereo disk cutter head ZS90 45 Al though stereo records could not be made with two mon aural disk cutter heads the stereo program material how ever could be captured with two monaural microphones For example for A B stereo recordings two cardioid mi crophones can be set up at some distance from one an other to record the left and right channels When Sen der Freies Berlin Radio Free Berlin conducted their first stereo test broadcast on December 26 1958 the right and left channels were transmitted on two different FM frequencies which could then be heard on two separate monaural FM receivers Mono compatibility with stereo broadcasting was not achieved until 1963 with the intro duction of the multiplex pilot tone system Full mono compatibility of recordings is only possible with intensity stereophony where identical microphones are placed at virtually the same location thus avoiding phase differences caused by different distan2. ces to the sound sources In some of these coincident techniques the mi crophones may have different directional patterns In oth er cases they have the same pattern but are set up along the main axis pointing in different di rections To simplify this recording process Neu mann developed a single appropriate microphone Their latest miniature microphone at that time the KM _ 56 possessed many features readily adaptable for use in the first Neumann stereo mi crophone It has a small dual diaphragm capsule switchable to any of the three main directional patterns omnidirection al cardioid or figure 8 In a stereo microphone two cap sules of this type are mounted one above the other in a single head Combined with two microphone amplifiers placed alongside one another in a tube measuring only 30 mm in diameter the SM 2 was created or ow NN om 9 The power supply for the SM 2 features two rotary switch es for adjusting the directional patterns of both channels independently to any of the three main patterns omnidi rectional cardioid or figure 8 A further three intermedi ate settings can be selected for a total of nine different patterns per element In addition the upper transducer can be rotated over a range of 270 degrees referenced against the lower capsule The resulting microphone is ideal for the various types of intensity stereophony For use as an X Y microphone identical unidirectional pat
3. terns are selected for both channels and the recording aperture is controlled by the angle between upper and lower capsules against the main axis In M S technology the capsules are positioned with the patterns for the M channel set to car dioid and on axis while the S channel is set to figure 8 and offset by 90 degrees The cardioid microphone thus picks up the complete sound event exactly like the princi pal microphone for a monaural recording All directional information is captured by the figure 8 pickup In M S ster eo recording technology the two microphone outputs are combined in a matrix to form the sum and difference sig nals which become the left and right channels True to its pedigree the sound quality of the SM 2 is very similar to that of the KM 56 It was produced between 1957 and 1966 Even today audio professionals consider it a secret weapon for piano recordings Pag
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