PRESS RELEASE
1/7TVN Corporate MediaAward-winning podcast production with Sennheiser microphones

Wedemark/Hannover, July 2024 – With their constantly growing fan base, podcasts arehighly relevant in today’s media landscape. Companies, too, have long since discovered
this medium as a means to provide insights into their corporate world and topics.
However, not all businesses are able to or want to produce podcasts completely on theirown. This is where professional partners such as TVN Corporate Media GmbH & Co. KG(tvn-cm.de/en) come into play.

TVN Corporate Media, which is part of the TVN Group, has been successfully active in the fieldof audiovisual production for many years. Where required, they will provide support forcompanies as a full-service partner throughout the entire podcast production process. Rolf
Rosenstock, Creative Director Corporate Audio: “Our services range from format coordinationand the selection of topics and hosts, including booking and contract management, tocomplete production processes, including sound design, creation of the cover image andpublication on target platforms. We create distinctive identities that match the individual
concept: intros, outros, stingers and jingles.”Creative producer Rolf Rosenstock works as a host in
the podcast studio and always does his best to makehis guests feel comfortable

PRESS RELEASE
2/7

TVN Corporate Media is responsible for award-winning podcast productions, including a true
crime podcast series for the daily newspaper “Neue Presse” from Hannover, which focuses onreal and sometimes unsolved criminal cases from the region around Lower Saxony’s capitalcity. With five seasons to date, the series has had more than 900,000 downloads/streams andhas held top positions in the genre charts on Apple and Spotify.

Mixing, mastering and murderers
At the end of April 2024, the sixth season of “True Crime Hannover” was recorded at a TVNGroup studio in Hannover. The format, which won the Lower Saxony Media Award in
December 2023, is the most successful podcast of the Madsack Mediengruppe, which owns
the “Neue Presse” and TVN Group Holding GmbH & Co. KG with its subsidiaries. “True CrimeHannover” has been in Apple’s genre charts continuously for three years now.

The “True Crime Hannover“ format, whichwon the Lower Saxony Media Award in
December 2023, is Madsack
Mediengruppe’s most successful podcast

All seasons, each of which has six episodes, were conceived, written, recorded, mixed,
mastered and published by TVN Corporate Media under the directorship of Rolf Rosenstock. In
the five seasons that have been produced since autumn 2021, “Neue Presse” employees talkabout true criminal cases from the Hannover region. Regular guests in the studio include
lawyers, forensic doctors, police officers and psychiatrists, who use their expertise to put eventhe most unusual human dramas into perspective and contribute qualified information fromtheir respective fields.

One of those supporting Rosenstock in producing the podcast is post-production specialist
Alexander Kollmeyer, who has worked at TVN since 1996. Kollmeyer has his workplace in thePRESS RELEASE
3/7

company’s multifunctional sound studio located in the well-known Anzeiger office block inLower Saxony’s state capital. The control room is equipped for Dolby Atmos productions andhas a 5.1.4 loudspeaker setup, including an elevated playback level. The equipment installed
includes nine bi-amplified Neumann KH 120 two-way monitors with integrated class-AB
amplifier modules, which ensure reliable assessment of the sound quality. However, in thestudio, the podcasts are mixed in stereo rather than in multi-channel processes such as Dolby
Atmos or Auro-3D.

A guest in the studio: Monika
Freckmann worked at Lower
Saxony’s LKA (Criminal PoliceOffice) for more than three decades
as a soil analysis expert. “Dirt is mylife,” says the retired forensic
scientist jokingly. As a trained
chemical laboratory technician,Freckmann has helped to convict
many criminals in her professional
career thanks to her meticulous soil
analysis. In the past, she would
probably have been called a“tracker”

For the podcasts, the speakers’ voices are picked up using dynamic Sennheiser MD 46
reporter’s microphones and are pre-amplified with external pre-amps before being transmitted
via high-quality converters with a bit depth of 24 bit and a sample rate of 48 kHz to aprofessional DAW, where the recording is made. Mixing and mastering are carried out “in thebox” using various plug-ins without additional peripheral equipment. The result is a highquality WAV file, which is subsequently converted into a suitable format for the respective
podcast distribution platforms.

A relaxed studio atmosphere: just like in a living room …
Mobile dividing walls, soft furniture and carpets are used in the recording studio to create apleasant living room atmosphere for the podcasts. “We want our guests to feel comfortable.
After all, these are not studio professionals, but people who rarely have to deal with recordings
and might sometimes be a bit nervous,” explains Rosenstock. “It was therefore all the more
important for us to create an atmosphere for the speakers to have a relaxed conversation –and this ultimately benefits their performance. Soon after they start talking, most guests havealready forgotten that they are being recorded.” From a sound engineering perspective,PRESS RELEASE
4/7

dividing walls, soft furniture and carpets produce “dry” room acoustics, and this helps toprovide good speech intelligibility.

The recording studio has arelaxing atmosphere

The fact that the same microphone type is used for all guests is a deliberate decision, as audio
specialist Alexander Kollmeyer explains: “Each type of microphone has its own characteristics,and I want to ensure that all persons are treated equally in terms of acoustics and that no-one
is given preference based on the sound of their microphone. In podcast recordings, I’m not a
fan of the proximity effect and I attach great importance to making the recording sound as
natural as possible, which, in my opinion, can also include the occasional slight backgroundnoise. If everything is ruthlessly ‘ironed out’ during post-production, the overall sound canseem too sterile. For podcasts, I don’t try to achieve a typical radio sound, which to a certain
extent is a matter of taste. Personally, I just don’t like it when the bass components of voices
are over-emphasised when people are speaking.”

Kollmeyer continues: “We don’t have trained speakers with professional microphone disciplinein the studio for our podcasts. Our guests often move around quite naturally in their armchairs,
which means that the distance between their mouth and the microphone is constantly varying.
If we used the type of close-miking that is common in radio broadcasting, that would lead toproblems.”

Rosenstock adds: “For me as a host, it’s important that I can focus entirely on the conversationand my guests. I don't want to have to worry about whether the sound is OK. At TVN, we arecommitted to providing the best possible sound quality – and our customers expect that, too.

PRESS RELEASE
5/7

I’m really pleased to have a proven expert like Alexander Kollmeyer at my side for the
production of our podcasts.”

Post-production
specialist AlexanderKollmeyer is responsible
for good sound in thestudio

Professional podcast recording with Sennheiser MD 46
Kollmeyer is in the comfortable situation of having access to an extensive pool of microphones,
all of which can be flexibly used within the TVN Group. A large number of Sennheiser
microphones are available for outside broadcasting for TVN Live Production GmbH, including alot of MKH condenser models and “classic” dynamic microphones such as the MD 441-U or
MD 421-II. Various Neumann microphones are also available for all kinds of applications.
“When I’m working in the studio with professional speakers, I always like to use largediaphragm microphones such as the Neumann U 87 Ai or a model from the Neumann TLM
series “, says Kollmeyer. “But for the podcast production, I deliberately chose the Sennheiser
MD 46, because it’s perfectly suited for this job.”

The Sennheiser MD 46 is a high-quality dynamic microphone with a cardioid pick-up patternthat was specially developed for rough use in live reporting and is very popular on radio andtelevision, especially because it offers an impressively high level of speech intelligibility evenin noisy environments. The MD 46 has a relatively long shaft and is easy to handle, as its
special design effectively avoids problems with wind and structure-borne noise. A robust twoply stainless-steel sound inlet basket protects the shock-mounted capsule. The frequency
response of the MD 46 extends from 40 Hz to 18 kHz.

PRESS RELEASE
6/7

For the podcasts, the speakers’
voices are recorded using dynamic
Sennheiser MD 46 microphones

Kollmeyer has been using Sennheiser products for more than 30 years and is convinced bytheir proverbial quality and reliability. He says: “I have a musical background and still playdrums in a band. I’ve been able to gain a lot of experience with Sennheiser microphones overthe past three decades and these were always positive in very different contexts. My band wassupported early on by Michael Polten, who at that time was head of the Music Industry team at
Sennheiser. I can still clearly recall the first time I put on a pair of closed Sennheiser HD 25
headphones, which immediately became my favourite model – I ended up wearing them all thetime! They were incredibly loud and exactly the right thing for me as a drummer … (he laughs).
With Sennheiser, I know that I can rely on the technology and always get good sound results.”

For podcast productions, guests in the TVN studio not only use microphones from Sennheiser.
They can, if they want to, also put on closed Sennheiser HD 280 PRO headphones, which arevery comfortable to wear with their soft ear pads and are easy to handle with their single-sided
cable. These dynamic around-the-ear stereo headphones feature highly detailed, linear soundreproduction and good attenuation of ambient noise.

True crime podcasts – harmless listening enjoyment?
The true crime genre is extremely popular in the podcast landscape. With exciting andsensational, sometimes even sensationalist, stories about true crimes and mysterious criminalcases, True Crime podcasts attract a wide audience. “Evil is all around us” is the unwritten
headline.

Podcasts like these have often tended to focus on the victims and their families, without giving
due consideration to their privacy and their suffering. What is more, the selection of cases andPRESS RELEASE
7/7

the way that they are presented runs the risk of producing a tendentious image of crime. This
type of selective representation can promote stereotypes and misconceptions about crime andcreate a narrative that suggests that the victims themselves are responsible for their situation(“victim blaming”).

TVN Corporate Media is well aware of this problem. Rosenstock explains: “Of course, we at
TVN asked ourselves how we could do it differently and better. For that reason, we invite
experts who can put the topic into the right perspective. We also provide information on wherevictims can find help and support, and it is often the case that we have family members asguests who are prepared to talk openly about their feelings. It is clear that, with a topic like
this, we also have to examine the psyche of the perpetrators, but this perspective is not ourmain focus. We prefer to put detailed questions to an investigator who can shed some light on
the matter or who perhaps even helped to successfully solve a case.”(Ends)The images in this press release can be downloaded here.
About TVN CORPORATE MEDIATVN CORPORATE MEDIA designs and creates customised solutions for all corporate
communication challenges. These include innovative and measurably successfulcommunication strategies with a focus on moving-image content. Their approach is tounderstand and achieve a client's goals through holistic campaigns across all channels. TVNCORPORATE MEDIA is a long-standing agency partner of commercial enterprises and public
institutions, and is part of the TVN GROUP.
tvn-cm.de/en

About the Sennheiser Group
Building the future of audio and creating unique sound experiences for our customers - this isthe aspiration that unites the employees of the Sennheiser Group worldwide. The independent
family-owned company Sennheiser was founded in 1945. Today, it is managed in the third
generation by Dr. Andreas Sennheiser and Daniel Sennheiser, and is one of the leading
manufacturers in the field of professional audio technology.
sennheiser.com | neumann.com | dear-reality.com | merging.com

Global pro audio press contact
Stephanie Schmidt
stephanie.schmidt@sennheiser.com+49 (0)5130 600-1275