In about 1992 agm decided it was a good idea to develop surround sound recording equipment. This was mainly due to client demands (see article on Touchdown Studios under Past Projects). All of these developments proved however about 10 years ahead of the market. Only recently has the awareness of 5.1 surround for home reproduction led to any developments of note in this field. agm were doing all of this some 10-15 years ago (modestly speaking)!

The AGM MR1 is a microphone system designed with Danish Pro Audio (who helped design and manufactured the microphone assembly using four carefully matched B&K 4011 capsules). A remotely controlled mic preamp balanced the signals and fed four channels of analogue to digital conversion made by Prism Sound in Cambridge England. Signals were then processed and "steered" using a specially developed DSP system and the resulting signals could be decoded to pretty much any speaker layout or number of channels.

At the time of development the system was extraordinarily expensive which made the market for such systems very small and also expensive to approach. It's not that AGM wanted to disappoint many enthusiasts by seeming unwilling to lend out the remaining system ad libitum but, frankly, we had to make money and although this was one of the most advanced and prestigious developments in modern audio, the chances of making it make money in any other capacity than our own in-house recording system was deemed very remote.

AGM has made several recordings with this system - also a test recording for ORF with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Riccardo Muti playing Bruckner's 7th Symphony. We are currently developing hardware that will allow us to also incorporate another microphone system using the benefits of experience gained from over 10 years of recording in surround.

Please download the Studio Sound review of the system from the download section of the website for an explanation of ambisonic steering.