Brahma Microphones

At Brahma Microphones we work hard to make high quality ambisonic recording  easily available to sound recordists in all kinds of environments; and to make it easier to work with multichannel recordings. Each microphone we make is crafted, calibrated, and tested with care.

Ambisonic microphones from US$500

 

 

Field ambisonics
Ultra-lightweight rugged design for professional field recording.

 

Studio ambisonics
Additional circuitry for increased dynamic range in professional studio applications.

 

Specifications for the 14 mm capsules used in Field and Studio microphones

Sensitivity 37 dB (0 dB = 1V/Pascal)
Measured sensitivity, including electronics 20.5 mV/Pa
S/n ratio 71 dB  (2nd order array will have 12 dB less noise on average)

The microphones are calibrated against an Earthworks measurement microphone, The Earthworks microphone specifies its frequency response as 3Hz to 23kHz ± 1/-3dB. Brahma microphone, after applying its calibration FilterMatrix, will match this in the range of 40 Hz to 18.5 KHz.

 

Why choose a Brahma microphone?

Designed by Umashankar Manthravadi. Handcrafted in Bangalore

We operate on a small scale that allows us to closely monitor quality and keep overheads down to offer you high quality, excellent sounding microphones at a competitive price. Each microphone is built with carefully matched sets of capsules, subjected to several quality tests and precisely calibrated with a set of FilterMatrix files that are unique to each microphone.

HELP GETTING STARTED

Each Brahma microphone comes with a booklet to takes you step by step into making and reproducing high quality ambisonic recordings.  Our customers are using Brahma microphones for everything from Virtual Reality to music production and film soundtracks. These microphones are as versatile as your imagination.

long term product support

Our products are built to open standards and support the right to repair.  After your warranty period we continue to offer low cost repairs and maintenance. Brahma microphones are built to last a long time with good care.

• No questions asked refund, minus shipping costs. If you are not delighted during the first two months after your purchase, just send the microphone back and we will refund the purchase price.
• Free repairs for one year, you only pay for shipping the microphone to us.
• After one year warranty, we still do repairs for only the cost of parts plus shipping both ways.
• Free recalibration of microphone after two years (recommended). You pay shipping. (Calibration of 3rd party microphones (including DIY) for 100 dollars a microphone plus all shipping).
  
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Latest news

The lifetime work of Brahma microphones founder Umashankar Mathravadi is currently being featured in a major exhibition at HKW in Berlin between now and the September 20th. If you are there check out A Slightly Curving Place; and learn more about the acoustic archeology work that inspired Uma to come up with the first portable Brahma microphone designs so he could measure hard to reach archeological locations.

Available on Amazon

Two of the Brahma Ambisonic microphones. Brahma Field 4 and Brahma Field 8, are now available on Amazon. (at the moment, only through Amazon.com). We are also selling Meena Shotgun microphone – a low cost microphone for beginning film makers – on Amazon.com

 

I have been building microphones, at first for my own use as a location sound recordist, for more than 30 years now.  Electronics has been a hobby since childhood and when I  started out as a recordist I knew I could build better microphones than I could afford to buy.

I built my first ambisonic microphone more than ten years ago. But the real breakthrough came when I  mounted them on a stem on top of the Zoom H2 recorder.

Small, readily available 4 channel recorders and high quality 3d printing enabled me  to make the capsule arrays both more accurate and more rugged and make the whole set up extrememly light-weight and portable. This has made ambisonic recording more accessible and versatile than it was in the past.

After a two year partnership with Embrace Video during which we made and sold some 200 microphones, both Brahma-in-Zoom and standalone, I moved to Bangalore, and set up small-scale production. The aim is to keep the scale small, so every microphone is hand assembled and tested at every step. Paradoxically, it also helps to keep the costs low. There are very few overheads compared to establishing and running a factory, even a very small one. If demand forces me to expand, I intend doing it in a way I can continue to listen to every microphone that is made.

There are lots of ways you can use your Brahma!  I started with acoustic measurements of ancient archaeological spaces. The measurements I produce can generate detailed acoustic properties of the space. These impulse responses can also be used to recreate the acoustics of the space in your own recordings too.

You can see the work of an important research group, who use an early version of  Brahma microphone in their work. archeoacustica

Soundtracks for virtual reality and augmented reality

Ambisonic microphones were a niche product till about three years ago. But they have become the go to microphones for AR/VR/MR. I get enquiries for these microphones regularly and have sold several to clients in this field, such as Oculus Rift.

Field recording

As well as professional field recordings for creative applications in film and VR, several ethnomusicology scholars have used Brahma-in-Zoom for their audio documentation, finding the ability to record unobtrusively and zoom into  sounds of interest in post production very useful.

Music Recording

I have used ambisonic microphones for music recordings ever since I started making them – about ten years ago. From Manganiar folk musicians in Rajasthan, outdoor outside the Jodhpur Fort, to Sarod and Tabla,  performed in a friend’s living room, to a jazz concert in Delhi, and many recordings of traditional music in Kishangarh, Rajasthan. Brahma-in-Zoom is a versatile way to make unobtrusive recordings with a high fidelity of spacial reproduction. Sarod and Tabla – Brahma-in-Zoom

Many of the requests we have received are for samples of nature recordings. We will try and meet these requests. First we start with a recording of frogs done in south India by Shreyasi Kar, using Brahma-in-Zoom.
Listen to the frogs here  (B-format recording converted to ORTF-ish stereo using VVdecode from VVaudio.) Or  distant calls of sarus – Bharatpur forest

“I have a preproduction version and when used with the proprietary filter set, it sounds fantastic: beautifully resolved and detailed and also very musical. It was a significant part of the sound I captured with Mitchell Stein and Todd Cochran’s recording of Maurice Ravel’s “Blues”.”
Blues
Michael Aarvold
Recording Engineer/Scoring Mixer

Get in touch for orders and enquiries. Whether you have already chosen the Brahma ambisonic microphone you want, or you have questions this website hasn’t answered; we’d love to hear from you.