Neumann will announce a line of studio monitors later in 2010.
World renowned for its professional microphones, Neumann has announced that it is adding Neumann-branded studio monitors to its portfolio. The new line will be based on products from Klein + Hummel, another company in the Sennheiser family of products. K+H monitors earned an excellent reputation in European market, but are less well known in other countries, particularly in North America.
“This will certainly change in the near future, because the Neumann brand is well-established in the international studio world,” says Wolfgang Fraissinet, president of marketing/sales at Neumann Berlin. “We anticipate a strong synergy effect here.
Neumann is no stranger to non-microphone technologies, such as record lathes and studio consoles. In this rare photo, company founder Georg Neumann (left) experiments with an optical film sound recorder.
“In the history of the company, Neumann stands for far more than microphone technology,” Fraissinet continues, “and over the decades we have also produced record-cutting equipment and studio consoles, for example. Our expertise in transformer design for the microphone—as well as in signal processing and digital audio technology, has already been demonstrated. In addition Neumann has a leading role in the area of high technology, which is successfully implemented, for instance, in the digital microphones of Neumann’s Solution-D series.”
Existing K+H studio monitors are being incorporated into the Neumann product portfolio as the “KH Line.” Over time, new products will be developed to fulfill the needs of high-end studio professionals. The first new studio monitors carrying the Neumann label will be launched later this year.
Since the acquisition by the Sennheiser organization in 2005, most of the former Klein + Hummel engineers continue to work in support of Sennheiser’s Installed Sound division and within Neumann’s Studio Monitor Systems division. And service for present and future customers is provided for the most part by those same employees.
The new Neumann Synergie logo
So far, Neumann has been secretive about the new products, other than unveiling a new logo for this symbiosis of the two technologies, known as Neumann Synergie. The circular logo shows a microphone grille on the left and a speaker cone on the right, with a gentle sine wave shape separating the two. So the rest of us will have to wait until later in the year for more details on Neumann’s first studio monitors. Stay tuned. We’ll keep you posted as soon as we hear anything.
For more information about Neumann microphones, visit www.neumannusa.com. For more information about Neumann’s existing K+H monitor line, go to Neumann’s Professional Monitoring page.
