"Over the years I've kept hearing about Sontronics from a wide range of friends and everyone seemed to have a good word to say!
"The first Sontronics mic I used was the prototype ARIA that was being beta-tested at Abbey Road Studios. I intercepted it to use at the studio I share at Tileyard with Joe Rubel. We were gearing up for some recordings with composer Michael Price (Sherlock, The Inbetweeners 2, Delicious) and in the market for a new cello mic, so we put ARIA to a blind test against about ten other 'by the book' cello mics. The ARIA won all rounds of the tests – we loved the sound of it – and, being Scottish, I was amazed it wasn’t going to bankrupt me! Michael and I bought a matched pair and haven’t looked back.
"I’m really fussy with my cello sound. I don’t like when it gets too nasal in the 1k territory or too 'apple-y' lower downl I just want that elusive 'totally flat sound with lots of character that just "sounds like I sounded in the room". The issue with a lot of the big-name mics is they add so much colour that it slightly overcooks the sound to my ears, and sounds like a 'recording' of a cello. I love it when it just sounds like a cello and the ARIA just captures that sound in a really simple, clean way.
"I do a lot of 'scary noises' as well as the melodic stuff, so a microphone mustn’t colour the sound too much; it needs to just capture the sound as it hears it. The ARIA does exactly that, plus it's super simple to use, and doesn’t require an immense amount of mic technique to get a cracking sound really quickly!
"I love the Aria's build quality (I’m occasionally pretty clumsy, especially at 4am) and the box looks like it could contain an expensive cigar, which is pretty cool. People should also know that the Sontronics customer support is brilliant and hilariously witty and occasionally tasty too (the bag of branded M&Ms were inspired). "If you want to know what ARIA sounds like, it's all over my album TOUCH, my Spitfire Audio sample library, some amusingly oversized Hollywood movies (including my soundtrack to A Little Chaos), and some smaller films and TV stuff too. It’s really versatile, and lets me just get on with scraping Mr Cello.
"I love the ARIA on both my acoustic cello and my electric one. It's such a terrific mic with a clean, honest sound and it's built like a tank. It's the only mic I own now!"
