Soyuz is a manufacturer of boutique professional recording microphones and preamplifiers based in Tula, Russia. The company was founded in 2013 by David Arthur Brown, the lead vocalist for the US band Brazzaville, as well as Russian entrepreneur Pavel Bazdyrev.[1] The company is headquartered in Tula, Russia and also has a presence in Los Angeles and Prague.[2][3]
According to David Arthur Brown the name Soyuz, meaning Union in Russian was chosen in order to emphasise the collaborative nature of combining Russian engineering with Western marketing expertise, in particular reference to the joint Apollo–Soyuz project, and the former name of the Soviet Union.[4] Initially it was planned to name the company Baikal Microphones, in reference to the clarity of Lake Baikal. However, this was dropped after its similarity with the Guangdong based Enping Baikal Audio Equipment Company was noted. Nonetheless, the company remains legally incorporated with this earlier name.
In 2020, the company launched a subsidiary brand named Tula Mics, producing a consumer oriented USB microphone.[5]
Influenced by the metalworking heritage of the city of Tula, Soyuz Microphones draw inspiration from Soviet and Russian design traditions, combining the functional engineered minimalism of the Soviet space program as well as the opulence and transcendence of traditional Russian architecture.[6][7]
Soyuz microphones are used by a large number of musicians, television personalities and bloggers including Metallica, Coldplay, Radiohead, Paramore, The Lumineers, Shawn Mendes, Sam Smith, Svetlana Surganova, Larisa Dolina, Artemy Lebedev, Yuri Antonov, Valeriya, Maxim Fadeev and Nikolay Baskov.[4]
Sound engineers and producers that use Soyuz microphones include:[8]
