In One Voice
A studio microphone for a volunteer narrator
The ask
Our office manager has run this place since before most of us were hired. At night she reads books aloud for a volunteer audiobook library, recording in her hall closet, where the coats deaden the echo. She just finished all of Middlemarch. We want her next book on a studio microphone. Around $2,400.
The gift
A Neumann TLM 103, the large-diaphragm studio microphone whose capsule derives from the maker's U 87, introduced in 1967 and still the studio standard, and with lower self-noise than that famous microphone. We choose the mono set, with its elastic shock mount, and bring a two-channel audio interface, a stand and a pop screen. We set it up in her closet and record a test page with her, so the first night is spent reading.
Why it's extraordinary
That library already holds Middlemarch, released in 2008 and read in turns by seventeen volunteers across its 86 chapters. Hers carries one voice through the whole book, and a microphone this quiet adds almost no hiss of its own beneath her softest line.
The moment
On a long drive somewhere, a stranger starts chapter one in her voice, and the next book is already under way in the closet.
A curator replies within one business day.
