We've heard about the Zylia multi-point microphone in previous news items, but never seen one in the flesh. The mic system features a sphere-like ball with 19 omnidirectional microphones that pick up the sound in a 360 degree pattern. Once recorded (via USB), the resulting file can be separated into multiple discrete sources via the Zylia application. This used to be a cloud based service, but its now done on the host computer.

So essentially, you can stick one mic up in a room full of musicians, record it, then extract each instrument into its own track for multi-track mixing or processing.

Zylia's Piotr Szczechowiak PHD - one of the boffins behind the system, told us about future plans to allow the mic to be used for ambisonic recording, for applications such as VR audio later in the year.

The Zylia costs around $999

More Information

• zylia.co

• Spherical Mic Separates Instrument And Vocals 15-Jul-16