Lianne Dhalla | 22 Nov 2022 02:22 PM
The German studio specialist Neumann.Berlin has just announced that the Neumann TLM 102 diaphragm microphone will be available in a limited edition White colour variant in the Indian market. This White Edition will drop as a studio set with the inclusion of an EA 4 shock mount to match the microphone’s glossy all-white finish. There will only be 1000 pieces sold so if you are an all-white aesthetic kind of person you may want to make a swift lunge at these.
The TLM 102 has been designed with smaller studios and novices in mind. The cardioid pattern and an integrated pop screen lend to ease of use and the enormous dynamic range of 132dB makes it perfect for home and project studios. It offers clean, uncoloured sound and fast transient response making the TLM 102 an excellent choice for all kinds of vocals as well as a wide range of instruments, the likes of the acoustic and electric guitar, bass guitar and double bass, drums, percussion, brass, saxophone and so on.
What makes the device so appealing? Well, it looks as good as it sounds (something that’s hard to find in humans these days!). It is probably one of the more affordable large diaphragm condenser microphones on the market today and it does have German precision when it comes to attention to detail. That said, compared to more expensive Neumann microphones, it does offer less in terms of size and features, but not on sound quality.
Thanks to the remarkably linear response across the entire midrange, the TLM 102 is more than capable of capturing the authenticity of any voice or instrument, enhanced by a slight lift around 10 kHz for the highs. Humble as ever, the device’s self-noise of only 12 dB-A is much lower than the ambient noise in a quiet room.
Down to the technicalities, this beauty packs in High-precision drivers, a mathematically modeled dispersion waveguide and a DSP engine that allows for room adaptive calibration via Neumann’s MA 1. It offers a linear frequency response of 39 Hz to 21 kHz (±3 dB) and a linear phase response of 105 Hz to16 kHz (± 45°) with latency < 2,6 ms. You can grab all these features of a pretty decent ₹64,900 at authorized Neumann partners. But you may want to break out that credit card fast, it is a limited edition piece!