History

Brauner Microphones, as it is known today, was founded in the beginning of 1995, as a follow up of Dirk Brauners first company, D.B.E., (Dirk Brauner Engineering) a company that was mainly offering maintenance services on professional audio gear and that also developed some special tube equipment and guitar amps. Nevertheless, the roots in the development and completion of Brauners unique VM1 tube microphone go back to the time even before the D.B.E. in 1993, where Dirk Brauner started his first experiments on the development of tube microphone circuitry.

The goal was to make the dream of building the best tube microphone in the world come true, the way Dirk Brauner was thinking about it. In those days he was in no way thinking about establishing a company one day or to sell larger quantities of microphones. Dirk Brauner built the first VM1 just for himself. But after he finished the first VM1, the people that heard it were amazed and thought it was absolutely fantastic. Many of them wanted a VM1 for themselves and urged Dirk to build one for them, which he did. By word of mouth the news of this sensational new microphone spread so wide, that more and more people wanted to have it. That was the beginning of a first series of 20 totally handcrafted VM1's.

Since the request for VM1 microphones increased further on, Dirk Brauner finally decided to establish a whole new company, specialised in building the finest handcrafted tube microphones ever. Beneath its awesome sound quality and high sensitivity, the VM1 was definitely the most noiseless tube microphone ever built and its meticulous built quality and design attracted more and more people. What followed then was like a dream...

The request for VM1 microphones went on and on and with one splendid product review following another and with famous engineers like Bruce Swedien, endorsing his "new favourite vocal mic" and Mal Luker, endorsing his "new favourite scoring microphone ever", the story of the success of the VM1 continued.

Within its almost 10 years of existance, Brauner advanced to become one of the most respected and renowned microphone manufacturers worldwide, with countless top customers using Brauner microphones, many of which are world famous artists and award winning engineers. (See Userlist) Many other world class microphones followed the success of the VM1, such as the Valvet and Phantom Series, building Brauners strong reputation for excellent microphones, handmade in Germany.