" Yesterday’s Charm, Today’s Precision”: Martin B. Kantola and the design of a new ‘classic’ microphone (Nordic Audio Labs NU-100K)

Saario, Antti ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2912-1354 (2022) " Yesterday’s Charm, Today’s Precision”: Martin B. Kantola and the design of a new ‘classic’ microphone (Nordic Audio Labs NU-100K). In: Innovation in Music 2022, 17-19 June 2022, Royal College of Music, Stockholm.

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Abstract / Summary

This paper investigates innovation in transducer design by the sound engineer, inventor and developer of high-end audio equipment, Martin B. Kantola, who, in the words of the late Bruce Swedien, is ‘the microphone guru of life’ and ‘knows more about microphones than any one single guy I have ever met’ (Swedien, 2018, 2009).

Kantola’s boutique microphone manufacturing business ‘Nordic Audio Labs’ (NAL) is based in the village of Karperö in the Swedish-speaking parts of the West-coast of Finland where all the microphones are hand-built in-house by Kantola and his team of family members.

Notably, the NAL microphones are favoured by artists and engineers in various production, genre and stylistic contexts, ranging from orchestral recording to contemporary pop production, and the A-list users and owners include Björk, Bruce Swedien, James Hetfield, Al Schmitt, Michael Jackson, and the super-hitmaker Max Martin.

Due to the fundamental role of transducers in recorded sound production practice, the affordances and constraints associated with specific models shape the recorded sound with an immediate and direct effect, thus affecting and shaping the whole production process. More so than with loudspeakers, microphone choices tend to be wedded to ‘classic’ models and their contemporary reinterpretations or ‘clones’. Whilst NAL are known for their high-end versions of the venerable Neumann U-47 (NU-47, SWE#1, NU-47V, NU47-PQV), the company has refocused its business model around a single new microphone model – the NU-100K – which is marketed as ‘nothing short of revolutionary’ (Nordic Audio Labs, 2021) with the design goal of the microphone becoming “a new classic” (Kantola, Nordic Audio Labs, 2020).

Principal research questions are: What produces innovation in microphone design? What produces a (new) classic studio microphone? What informs Kantola’s designs and where and how innovation takes place in his work? How does innovation in microphone design feedforward to the audio production ‘chain’ (e.g., artist-microphone interaction, recording technique, changes in workflow)? What are the hallmarks of quality in microphones, according to Kantola?

The paper draws primarily from new interviews with Kantola and earlier conversations from my 2012 site visit to NAL. The investigation is supported by secondary research into related historical and studio production contexts, studio tests and comparisons of select NAL microphones models (NU-47V, NU-880F and NU-100K), available microphone reviews, user and designer comments, and other existing materials relating to Kantola’s work (incl. documentary footage).

The paper provides a value proposition for the work of Kantola and his 30+ year design ‘quest’ to produce a ‘new classic’ (NU-100K) and situates the associated innovation into a wider production context, presenting a theoretical framing and discussion of the approaches to microphones and transducer design and music technology innovation. According to Kantola there is no such thing as perfect sound, but it is, nevertheless, an eternal quest (Luukkanen, 2011), and he has made the strategic decision to compete in the global microphone market solely on the basis of a notion of ‘quality’ (Haavisto, 2017). Driven by this ‘quality’, Kantola’s career is a testament to what Swedien calls his “dedication to excellence” (Grönholm, 2010).

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