Lewitt RAY: by far the most innovative microphone of the year

Do you ever do studio recordings? Then you’ll know: once tracking is done, the real work begins. Painstaking work, to be precise. At Lewitt, they’ve found a way to make that heavy lifting a whole lot lighter. And no, not with a plugin. Discover the magic of the Lewitt RAY.

Do you ever run into…

…a recording that’s so inconsistent it’s almost impossible to place in the mix? One line is much louder than the next, and even with the most transparent compressor you can’t quite get it under control. At that point, there’s nothing for it but to manually apply the necessary volume automation. In moments like these, you’d wish there was a microphone that tracks the distance to the sound source and adjusts the level and tone in real time. Sounds like a dream, right? But what if we told you that this microphone actually exists… Meet the Lewitt RAY large-diaphragm condenser microphone with Aura technology.

Have a listen

Auto volume thanks to Aura technology

The Lewitt Ray has a built-in sensor that continuously measures your distance from the microphone. Based on that, the Aura circuit adjusts the output level. If you move in close to the mic, the output is automatically turned down, and if you take a step back, the volume is brought back up. And if you’ve enabled the Mute by distance function, the Lewitt RAY will mute the signal completely as soon as you exceed the set maximum distance. That’s incredibly handy for livestreamers and gamers. You can simply swivel the mic away for a moment. If the Aura sensor can no longer ‘see’ you, the mic mutes.

But it also adjusts the tone

The Lewitt RAY doesn’t just adjust volume, it also adjusts tone. As you move closer to the microphone, the low frequencies are dialled back a little, and as you step further away, the lows are boosted. This compensates for the proximity effect; a physical phenomenon with cardioid microphones where the low end gets boosted when the mic is close to the source, and the sound becomes thinner as the mic moves further away.

SOS Awards: Best Microphone of 2025

Is this like a built-in compressor? (No!)

No, Aura technology has nothing to do with compression. The volume isn’t adjusted based on how loud the signal is, but on how far you are from the sound source. The dynamics of the performance remain completely intact. So if you sing softly, it stays soft, and if you suddenly belt it out, it will still sound loud.

From pin-drop to jet engine

Thanks to the huge dynamic range of the Lewitt RAY, you get the most out of Aura technology. If you step away from the mic for a moment, the output is automatically boosted by up to +18 dB, but thanks to an extremely low self-noise of just 7 dB(A), that’s no problem at all. At the same time, the Lewitt RAY can handle very high SPL, so drums, guitar amps and jet engines are no issue.

But what does it sound like?

The Lewitt RAY uses the same capsule and the same circuit as the Lewitt LCT 440 Pure. Just like that popular Lewitt mic, the RAY has a very clean, open sound that stays almost perfectly flat across most of the frequency range. In the highest regions there’s a presence boost that gives your voice or instrument that extra bit of sparkle. Usually, that sparkle is added later during mixing, but at Lewitt they feel microphones should sound record-ready straight away. And that’s not a strange idea at all, in an era where it pays to put high-quality content online in no time.