Austrian drummer, multi-instrumentalist, composer and record producer, Thomas Lang (known for drumming for Kylie Minogue, George Michael, Robbie Williams, Kelly Clarkson, Sugababes and many more) tries out Austrian Audio’s OC18 and OC818 microphones on a number of drumming applications in the studio. He gives Austrian Audio his top five first impressions:
1. Making Passion Heard
I’m born and bred in Vienna, a beautiful city with a huge tradition of music. I love music – drums are my life. During my career I have learnt a lot about recording – it was all analogue still at one time, and there was a lot of attention to detail, perfect performances, and picking up everything really well with great mics in the studio.
2. In Love With Linear Sound
I tried them pretty much in all ways imaginable in my studio. I’m absolutely blown away. I love the absolutely linear, clear and very powerful signal I’m getting from the mics; I had to dial all my preamps down when I first plugged them in, so it’s picking up an incredible amount of volume and natural gain, which I love. It gives me a lot of head room still; it’s got an incredibly linear, beautiful, warm sound. You can literally feel the air move when you listen back to it, and it has an incredible brilliance in the top end – I just love them! I fell in love immediately.
3. Panorama Sound
I recently used the mics when recording a jazz guitar album. It was all acoustic – very soft playing, so I had the gains up quite a bit on my preamps, and I got an incredibly warm, full, beautiful stereo panorama – a wonderful sound.
4. Teaching Drumming
Lang is the co-owner of Nine Beats USA, an LA-based franchise of drum-and music schools. Nine Beats is the world’s largest franchise of music schools with over 250,000 students, 7,000 drum teachers and schools in over 1,000 locations in China. Nine Beats is a physical drum school, head office and audio/video production facility where Lang creates instructional content for Nine Beats Apps and websites.
I’m creating a ton of content – everything from drum lessons, to play-along tracks, to producing artists. The mics are in daily use for that, so it’s very exciting for me and gives me lots more opportunity to experiment with them!
5. Hooked On Austrian Audio
I’m hooked already. I love the fact that it’s Austrian-made; I couldn’t be happier!
