Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504940
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I FA L L 2 0 2 3 11 Dotterel got feedback. Lots of it and all positive. Not just on the ability of the mic to capture sound at long distances or the mic's ability to deal with high ambient noise, but the sound of the array itself was highly praised, according to CEO Shaun Edlin. "When it comes to digital microphones or arrays, there's usually this understanding that 'digital' sounds very clinical and very harsh, and the feedback we got was that it sounds very natural and it compared to the very best mics they used." No wonder it was named audio product of the year at NAB. "[T]he film industry, in particular, has said they really like this. Because it's an array, there's some quite unique things we can do. We've come from this period of very intense R&D, to becoming a manufacturer, to this year [with] the controlled introduction of Konos and getting it into a wide variety of use cases in the entertainment industry." Dotterel is still building arrays for drones in the public service industry but they are focused on bringing the Konos microphone array to market now. How It Works Traditional interference pattern microphones use a single element at the bottom of a cylinder full of long tubes of varying lengths to create varying time-of-arrival cancellations at different azimuths, or a directional pattern. The length of the cylinder and distribution of the phase tubes determines the directionality of the mic. That's not how Konos works. It's 35x35x255mm in a foursquare configuration, with 20 mic elements on each of the four sides for a total of 80 elements. There is a processing unit that provides POE (Power Over Internet) to the array through CAT5e or CAT6 cable and RJ45 connectors and it generates multiple outputs simultaneously. First, there's a selector switch to derive three preset patterns for output one; 60 degrees, 100 degrees, and 180 degrees are available. The next output delivers all the sound not from the selected pattern for ambience or, say, an interviewer's questions. In sporting events, this is being used to capture activity on the field in one output, and the crowd in the other. You also can use this "remainder" channel to characterize the room sound for any sort of post processing. The third output is a noise-filtered channel they are calling "Konos Select." It performs an edge extraction process and the output is channel one minus channel two, further reducing any ambient noise in the space. The three outputs are XLR connectors on the processing unit, which appears to be about 3x4x2.5 inches deep. The whole thing is powered through a USB-C connection. With an MSRP of $4,995 (US), Konos is currently available from Audio Department, Gotham, and Trew Audio in the US, along with additional vendors in Europe, Japan, and New Zealand. Beam Adjusting Beam Key Mid Beam (100 degrees) Narrow Beam (60 degrees) Wide Beam (180 degrees)