With great mics comes great responsibility: ATK Creator/Founder Alex Oana at the world-renown EastWest Studio 2

Is audio retail ready for a sea change?

Well, ready or not, here it comes: Audio Test Kitchen (ATK) has launched. An online audio showroom, it’s cracked the code of how to conveniently audition new microphones in the comfort of your studio—without having them in your studio.

SonicScoop editor David Weiss got the double-dip-sugar-cone scoop on Audio Test Kitchen, revealing the painful experiences and failures that inspired the creation and ultimately the breakthroughs of Audio Test Kitchen.

“The pain that I was experiencing was that I felt powerless to help [pro audio customers], because they were asking me to tell them what they should buy based on words we were using – things that we were describing, preferences, taste,” Oana continues. “I would always ask myself, ‘What gives me the right to tell you what you would like? I don’t have your ears.”

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A multi-year study ensued to learn how best to empower audio creators with the missing information. ATK created the software, partnered with 54 microphone manufacturers and booked time at EastWest Studios to record all the mics. Put 10 audio engineers in one of the world’s best studios with 20 lasers, 3 robots, and 250 microphones and what could possibly go wrong?

“We assembled a massive crew of engineers to record ten sources on 250 microphones at EastWest Studios over the course of a two-week period…We quickly realized that there were some variables that we were not yet good at controlling.

We successfully captured a Yamaha Disklavier self-playing piano, electric guitar, and bass on 250 microphones, but as far as drums were concerned, things got worse before they got better.

Drums became our albatross and we set out to solve the drum problem over the course of two more studios over the following months. It ended up being incredibly challenging, more than we would have ever thought.”

As we know, ATK persevered and found ways to adapt, ultimately creating the world’s first website where the sound of microphones can be auditioned and compared in an accurate and unbiased way.

An online audio showroom, it’s cracked the code of how to conveniently audition new microphones in the comfort of your studio—without having them in your studio.

Read the whole of the story from popular, New York-based audio technology website, SonicScoop, here.