FOCUS ON STAGE & STUDIO Made in the USA: Earthworks Audio Rocks the Mic

New Hampshire high-definition microphone manufacturer has won the allegiance of the Juilliard School

By Patrick Sullivan

hey’ve toured with Cold Play, Nine Inch Nails, Rufus Wainwright, the Indigo T Girls, and Branford Marsalis. They’re preferred by composer and violinist David Fulmer. And they grace the main perfor- mance spaces at the Juilliard School. High- definition microphones from Earthworks Audio have a strong following among musi- cians and sound engineers across a remark- able range of genres. But these hand-tuned, hand-tested, high-tech gadgets—all made in one American factory, a rehabilitated mill building in Milford, New Hampshire—seem to draw special devotion from the strings world. As audio supervisor of Julliard’s produc- tion department, Marc Waithe is sur- rounded by some of the best ears in the music world. Modern string musicians, he points out, often deal with compositions with huge dynamic ranges. “These need to be captured uncolored so the audience can hear and feel the emotions the artist and the composer intended,” Waithe says. “Earthworks, with its studio-quality sen- sitivity and impressive gain before feed- back, does this extremely well in live situations.” That would have been music to the ears of David Blackmer, Earthworks’ founder and a major innovator in the audio world. Blackmer died more than 10 years ago, but not before his company achieved an astonishing trans- formation. Many Earthworks fans would be surprised to learn that the company wasn’t created to produce microphones. Rather, Blackmer founded Earthworks in 1980 as a construction company specializing in moving earth at building sites. “I learned to drive a pit loader before I could drive a car,” says Daniel Blackmer, the

AllThingsStrings.com Strings / May 2013 57 FOCUS ON STAGE & STUDIO

youngest of David’s ten children. “My dad were saying, ‘That’s the best recording possi- focus on innovation. “That fell by the way- and I would go move earth around at con- ble.’ But he thought something was missing.” side a little because we didn’t have my struction sites as father-son bonding time.” So Blackmer slept with a copy of Gray’s father’s brain here anymore,” Daniel says. Selling state-of-the-art microphones was Anatomy beside his bed while developing a “I’ve been looking at what we’re doing and not on his father’s mind in those days, says theory that frequencies above the normal how we can improve it. We’re trying to get Daniel, now 29 and serving as Earthworks’ range of human hearing are critical to the back to that technological innovation he director of engineering. But construction was listening experience. brought to the table.” hardly his dad’s only talent. Long before Earthworks became an audio company Earthworks mics made it big, David Blackmer because Blackmer was working on a musical These hand-tuned, was a giant in electronics and audio engineer- side project. “He wanted to create the greatest ing. He registered patents, created compa- loudspeaker in the world,” his son explains. nies, and advanced new theories of human “But there was no measurement mic that hand-tested, high-tech hearing—all without a college degree. would let him test the speaker the way he Blackmer learned electronics basics by wanted.” gadgets seem to draw building radios as a kid. After a stint in the So he made his own microphone, incorpo- US Navy’s radar corps, he worked for the Ray- rating technology based on his theories theon Co. and ended up developing ground about human hearing. special devotion from telemetry systems for Project Mercury, The speaker itself never did well. But urged NASA’s first human spaceflight program. In on by an employee who was a jazz pianist on the strings world. the 1970s, he invented the DBX noise-sup- the side, Blackmer began selling micro- pression system and founded DBX, Inc., phones in the mid-1990s. Earthworks prod- shaking up the world of recorded sound. ucts became popular for live music and Not that his father will be easy to replace. Blackmer’s search for audio perfection studio recording. “And 17 years later, here we “My dad would decide one day that he sprung from his lifelong passion for classical are,” Daniel says. wanted to do something and then just do it,” music. “One of the things that frustrated my Earthworks has continued to flourish Daniel says with a laugh. “He had this father was that he was always able to tell the since Blackmer died of cancer at 75. But Dan- strange ability to jump in and be good at difference between being at a concert and lis- iel, who took the engineering department’s whatever he did. I’ve never met anyone like tening to a record,” Daniel says. “Experts helm three years ago, says there’s a renewed him.”

Generation next: Daniel Blackmer

58 May 2013 / Strings AllThingsStrings.com