NEUMANN: SURVIVING 90 YEARS OF SUCCESS
Neumann isn’t celebrating 90 years in the biz by a string of lucky coincidences, assures president of Neumann, Wolfgang Fraissinet. Throughout its long history, the German microphone manufacturer has been delivering on one key proposition: riding at the edge of physics to help turn natural sound into pieces of art. That’s not going to change; but Neumann, as a company, must.
Recently, we caught up with Fraissinet during his Australian visit to talk about the future.
AT: What’s 90 years of Neumann really mean for the company?
Wolfgang Fraissinet: The 90-year anniversary provides a good opportunity to talk about our history and even more importantly, talk about where we are going.
Being 90, there’s a danger of being viewed as a little bit dusty and old — almost 100 years old. So I get the chance to talk about what’s going on within our research and development department where we gear up for the years to come.
AT: Neumann has been a Sennheiser company for 25 or more years now. How much of that R&D happens at Neumann versus within the Sennheiser mothership?
R&D is within the Neumann headquarters, located in Berlin. Sennheiser R&D is in Hanover. We do of course have some synergies between both groups of engineers. Take, for example, the Neumann capsules for Sennheiser wireless transmitters. In that case it makes sense to give the best of both brands to the same customer to get better audio results. But other than that we are developing completely different tools and technologies at Neumann. We share information, we talk openly about our R&D with Sennheiser, but
