Røde Microphones
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Consumer and professional audio equipment |
| Founded | 1967 (as Freedman Electronics) |
| Founders | Henry Freedman, Peter Freedman |
| Headquarters | Silverwater, Sydney, Australia |
|
Area served
|
Global |
|
Key people
|
Peter Freedman AM (President), Damien Wilson (Global Marketing & Sales Director) |
| Products | Microphones |
|
Number of employees
|
200 (approx) |
| Website | http://www.rode.com |
Røde Microphones /ˈroʊd/ is an Australian-based designer and manufacturer of microphones, related accessories and audio software. Its products are used in studio and location sound recording along with live sound reinforcement.
Parent company to Røde Microphones, Freedman Electronics, was set up by husband and wife Henry and Astrid Freedman. Originally from London, Henry Freedman relocated to and started a family. Working as a chief engineer for a telecommunications company, Freedman would do after-hours servicing and modifications for a local agent of German pro-audio manufacturer Dynacord. In time Henry was offered the Australian distribution rights to sell the brand, and as a result migrated there in 1966 with his family, including son Peter.
Setting up a shop in the suburb of Ashfield, Freedman Electronics was one of the first companies in Sydney to design, manufacture, install and service a diverse range of audio products including loudspeakers, amplifiers and microphones.
Henry died in 1987, and his son Peter took over the family business. In the next few years he invested heavily in growing Freedman Electronics’ sound installation services, but his limited business experience combined with a difficult economy in the late 1980s almost bankrupted the company and left Peter in a considerable amount of financial debt.
With a grim outlook for Freedman Electronics, Peter was desperate for a solution to the company’s financial situation and while pursuing other ventures he recalled a microphone he had found almost 10 years previously at a trade show in Shanghai, China in 1981. After gauging local market interest he imported 20 of them. “They were shit... two out of the 20 weren’t working at all” Peter recalled in an interview. “I opened them up, and saw they’d used inferior components and the soldered joints were bad. So I fixed up the parts, made a board mod here and there and got them to a point where we could sell them. They weren’t super quiet compared to what we're doing now ... but they worked.”
Sales of the modified microphone began to take off in Sydney, which (in the Australian vernacular) was likened to taking off like “a rat up a drain pipe”. This gave lend to the unofficial title the ‘Rodent-1’, which was later broken up to become the Røde NT-1. Peter Freedman dropped in the ‘Ø’ character as a salute to his Scandinavian heritage and to give the brand a European flavour. The character is in use in the Norwegian and Danish alphabet, but not used in modern Swedish.
...
Wikipedia