By Dan Ferrisi
If you have any connection to the audio products industry, you’re almost guaranteed to be familiar with beyerdynamic, the family-owned audio equipment manufacturer, founded in 1924 and based in Heilbronn, Germany, that’s known for its headphones, microphones, wireless systems and more. Here in the United States, beyerdynamic products are distributed by American Music & Sound, the Woodland Hills CA-based distributor that also handles such brands as Kurzweil, Nord and Vestax. From American Music & Sound, The Music & Sound Retailer spoke to David Hetrick, who serves as National Sales Manager for beyerdynamic and Fostex, to discuss a truly revolutionary product launch in the wireless systems world.
As is the case with nearly any manufacturer with a history stretching back almost a century, beyerdynamic has had its ups and downs, somewhat losing its way in the ’90s only, now, to resurge to new levels of robustness and influence. “A couple of years ago,” Hetrick began, “there was a major reenergizing of beyerdynamic.” He continued, “They brought in a whole new marketing team…a real youth movement.” One substantial contribution credited to this youth movement has been a “start-from-scratch” mentality, as distinguished from piggybacking on technologies that have been established over a period of years. “Since everything beyerdynamic makes is designed and handmade in Germany,” Hetrick explained, “they’ve expanded their production. And, now, they’re able to do some very high-level things.” This is the laboratory from which beyerdynamic’s TG 1000 emerged.
TG 1000 is beyerdynamic’s first 24-bit digital wireless system, which covers a remarkable 319MHz of the UHF bandwidth (470MHz to 789MHz). This is extremely welcome news because, if you are part of the wireless community, you know that television, radio, cell phones, LTE and more are all grabbing for different frequency ranges. And, different countries have different legal frequencies. “beyerdynamic wanted to build one system that worked everywhere,” Hetrick explained. “Every frequency is available, and you can customize for any frequency in any country with one system.” There’s also a strong element of future-proofing because, of