Blackmagic Design to Release a New ATEM Microphone Converter Q2 of 2023

Audio analog to digital converter plus additional microphones — these are just a few of the many feats the new ATEM microphone converter of Blackmagic Design can offer.

The company, founded by some of the world’s leading post-production editors and engineers, announced in February 2023 that it will be releasing a new ATEM microphone converter in Q2. Said microphone converter will feature 4 high-quality input that is compatible with analog audio to MADI converter. It will also allow users to add additional microphones to ATEM switchers including the new ATEM Television Studio HD8.

“We are very excited by this product because we spent a lot of time innovation on the analog conversion design for incredibly high quality,” says Grant Petty, the CEO of Blackmagic Design. True to his word, the microphone converter has simplified the setup and requirements initially needed for analog to digital conversion.

With 4 analog inputs that are mic/line selectable and can be powered with 48V phantom power, the microphone converter can easily be switched and expanded. It even has 8 separate ‘ADCs per input to help extend dynamic range plus an HDMI monitoring output with scrolling audio waveforms.

The new microphone converter of Blackmagic Design also helped solve the common issue experienced in the noise floor. “We didn’t want to design a cheap converter, we wanted to design the best, so the benefit to customers is their microphone will have a very low noise floor so there is now background noise. The noise floor of this converter is lower than all the microphones we tested! That means any customer can get radio station audio quality without any technical knowledge. The converter does it all,” Petty proudly remarks.

With this, the new ATEM microphone converter has a low fixed noise floor of 129dBV no matter the digital gain applied. This was achieved through the strategic design of having the input directly convert audio using an ultra-high dynamic range conversion.

Speaking of wide dynamic range, this microphone converter allows various microphone levels to be adjusted using a digital pre-amplifier gain to make it more stable. This allows the digital pre-amplifier to be processed in 32-bit RAW audio bit depth despite the varying microphone types and brands.

Despite how dynamic this microphone converter is, it can also be precise. Its multi but unique ADC input design has precise matching between input audio channels that can maintain a stable and consistent flat noise floor.

Lastly, the new ATEM microphone converter has an HDMI video monitoring output so a user can simply connect it to a TV, computer, or monitor for a full status display. To make everything more simple, it also has 4 scrolling waveforms that can last over 60 seconds while you monitor the audio meters and levels at the input connector.

For full-on monitoring, you can also look at the indicators that will show you the switch settings for mic/line input and phantom power.

Ultimately, this new ATEM microphone converter of Blackmagic Design is definitely a do-all and be-all of mic converters that we are excited to have in the market and in the recording studio.