Last Updated on April 3, 2022 by Andrew Culture
Have you ever wanted to design or build a piece of musical equipment but never had the chops with a soldering iron to do it? Well now you can…sort of…
Aston Microphones finalise their British-designed products, using the Aston 33 panel, a 600 strong group of many of the top industry professionals, who blind test prototypes to build a consensus of opinions as to which design is best.
Now, they want you (yes, you!) to join the panel and help choose the desirable characteristics of their next release. Throwing open this stage will give Aston a much wider base of research and opinion to finalise their design before release and thus they are dubbing it the “People’s Microphone.”
As before, they have multiple prototypes with differing attributes already built and all they ask for are opinions on which sound you prefer. This ‘testing’ will be conducted over a number of rounds, from May to July and achieved by giving you access to sets of recorded files to review in your own listening space and then rating them from best to worst.
By logging into the website you can rank the audio files, using a blind testing protocol; you have no idea which audio file relates to which prototype. At the end of each round, Aston will analyse the results, adjust their prototypes depending on the results and then alert the participants to a new clutch of audio files for ranking.
In return, you will be able to call yourself a member of the official ‘Aston Family Voter Panel’. Aston will also be offering all participants a 25% discount on a limited edition version of the Aston Element, ONLY available to members of the Aston Family Voting Panel and will come complete with a certificate signed by Aston’s CEO, James Young, special edition window stickers and a special edition Aston pin badge, as well as digital logos for panel members to display on their own social media posts and webpages.
Design by consensus might not always work, but judging by the Origin and the Stealth, Aston have been able to bring high-quality products to the market at a fraction of the price of the competition. The results of this new project will be interesting to see and if you want to be a part of the Voter Panel, you can sign up by going to Aston Microphones website here….
