These discoveries, derived from more than 9000 data samples, were the catalyst for the Aston team to set about reimagining the microphone from the ground up. For example the prototype Stealth voicing that consistently came top in the voting for female vocal takes came off worst for male vocals and vice versa, regardless of the pitch of the singer! Furthermore a different voicing came top for ALL guitar sources, from finger picked acoustic through to mic’d distorted guitar cabs. Some surprising results arose from the Stealth project testing. In tests the panel do not know which mics they are listening to, so the resultant votes can’t be affected by brand reputation, or an expectation of how a certain microphone should sound. They perform blind listening tests on a range of possible versions of each new mic, plus ‘industry standard’ models from key manufacturers and vote on performance on a variety of sources (vocals, guitars and so on). The Aston 33 (so named after the original members) is now a panel of more than 120 top producers, engineers and artists who work with Aston on new product development to ensure every mic is best in class before it is released to the market. This results in much lower phase distortion than conventional filter designs.

The whole signal is slightly attenuated, with some frequencies being added back in at a higher level. The voice settings are not EQ filters, they are contour networks, meaning the bulk of the signal does not pass through any sort of filter circuitry. Stealth, however, provides a choice of four pure, high quality signal paths. Mics which apply ‘flattering’ - but destructive - pre EQ make professional post-processing almost impossible. There are 2 vocal settings, optimised for different vocal tones, a guitar setting which is equally suited to Spanish guitar, Electric guitar cab and steel string acoustic, and a dark, vintage setting, reminiscent of classic ribbon mics. Each setting has been voiced by a panel of more than 90 top flight audio engineers and producers on the Aston 33 panel through a series of double-blind listening tests, beating not only every mic in its class, but some far more expensive ‘industry standard’ mics. Think of Stealth as four professional microphones in one.

Halo spirit vs phantom