Among clients for the new DPA 4090 was Prinssen en Bus Raadgevende Ingenieurs, a consultancy for room and theatre acoustics, which bought eight 4090s for carrying out acoustic measurements.

“We often perform measurements in auditoria, theaters, classrooms and so on, and according to ISO 3382 – the International Organization for Standardization requirements for the measurement of room reverberation time - we are required to carry out measurements at multiple positions,” says the company’s room acoustics consultant Bjorn van Munster.

Besides his consultancy work, van Munster also works for SIAP Acoustic Systems, a manufacturer of a state-of-the-art acoustic architecture processor which can change the reverberation time of a venue. To create presets, at least 10 different measurements have to be made for each preset. In order to cut down the time needed to make the measurements, van Munster has been working with the DPA 4090s together with an 8-channel preamp and a multichannel measurement programme.

“We chose the DPA 4090s for several different reasons,” says van Munster. “The mics’ compact design and light weight are important to us for convenience in packing and travelling as we have a lot of SIAP projects in foreign countries. Other major advantages include omnidirectional directivity, low noise ratio and small membranes, which give us more accurate measurement results, especially in the high frequencies.”

“The 4090s have completely fulfilled our expectations. We have been able to make a compact, lightweight measurement box with high quality components. Additionally we are now able to make many measurements in a relatively short timespan.”

Another Dutch DPA 4090 client is Bloomline Studio, which bought four of the mics. These had their first outing for the recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion for Universal Music in a Dutch translation by Jan Rot. On this occasion they were used as overhead mics for the choir, but their uses haven’t stopped there.

“We’re finding that these small capsule mics are flexible enough to be used for all sorts of applications such as close miking, as the main microphone system, and sometimes as boundary layer mics,” says Bloomline CEO Leo de Klerk. “The small capsules allows close miking without off-axis colorization of the instruments' radiation patterns, while the flat power response ensures that leakage from other instruments and room acoustics do not blur the sound, even when many 4090s are used."

“Because the small capsule has a high resonance frequency, we often use the 4090 on woodwind and brass ensembles. The transient response of the mic separates the characteristic attack spectra of these instruments without focusing, and self noise isn’t a problem in these settings."

“Being an almost perfect point source, we find the 4090's directivity may be adjusted by applying boundaries such as spheres or the lid of a grand piano.”