First announced at NAB in April, Røde Microphones’s new SoundField microphone is the first result of a collaboration with SoundField, acquired by Røde’s parent company, The Freedman Group, in 2016.

The NT-SF1 also comes with a blimp-style windshield and fur cover for wind protection, and a shock mount for steady recording. The mic is based around four new TF45C half-inch cardioid capsules set in a tetrahedral array.

The microphones record in “A-Format,” and when they are converted to “B-Format,” the microphone can provide four tracks that can be manipulated in any direction in post, possess any polarity possible and enable creators to place their sounds wherever they like within the 360-degree soundfield.

The mic also comes with the SoundField by Røde companion plug-in for Mac and Windows personal computers. Matched to the NT-SF1 Microphone, the plug-in skips matrices and correction filters of previous generations and uses frequency-domain processing instead to deliver spatial accuracy. Also using beamforming technology, B-Format can, for the first time, create shotgun-type patterns.

The plug-in has standard surround-sound set-ups including Dolby Atmos up to 7.1.4, and is supported by Pro Tools, Q-base, Nuendo, Reaper and Logic in VST, AU or AAX formats.

The NT-SF1 mic is priced at $999.