Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Fritz Sennheiser Dies At 98


His company introduced the "shotgun" microphone in the 1950's.

3 comments:

Ken said...

I have an MD441, inherited from my pop. Best mic I've ever had. I almost said best mic I ever used, but I used a Telefunken U47 once, when dinosaurs was roaminatin' da earf.

Turk Turon said...

Sennheiser shotguns were the weapon of choice for news and documentary crews; still are, when the budget allows it. Taking along a Sennheiser usually requires a sound recordist, and most TV crews are "one-man bands" these days.

We used a Neumann U87 in the recording booth for recording voices. Introduced in 1967 and still manufactured. A superb mike for recording the human voice. Lots of cheaper lookalike knock-offs are available for half the price.

Roberta X said...

There's cheaper, but no better.

At the other end of the process, Sennehiser makes some of the best headphones out there. At one point, they were all "open back" types, which meant it was a rare DJ used them -- you'd get feedback if they were cracked up with audio from your own mic.

...Of course, this meant there were plenty around for us engineers.... :)