Dotterel

Market position

A deep-tech hardware startup from New Zealand whose team includes four former LanzaTech staff on its leadership team; investors have described it as a candidate to become a significant New Zealand technology exporter. The company has cited an addressable entertainment market of about US$1 billion and industrial applications valued at more than US$500 billion.

The company positions array-based electronic beamforming against conventional fixed-pattern shotgun and directional microphones, arguing that one unit can replace several mics and rigging positions, can be re-aimed without physical access or motors, can deliver a tight target feed and a wide atmosphere feed simultaneously on separate channels, and can produce a matched stereo pair without a second microphone. Management has contrasted the pace of innovation in audio capture with that in visual sensors.

Technology

An array of 80 MEMS microphone elements with digital beamforming. Beam width, direction and stereo splay are formed electronically rather than mechanically, giving cone apertures from 60° to 300°, electronic steering in 15° steps to ±90°, and a stereo pair formed from the same array so that channel matching and time alignment are inherent. On-device processing ("Konos Select") suppresses wind, rumble and drone rotor noise and can be bypassed for comparison. Audio is output as networked streams over Ethernet using AES67 and SMPTE ST 2110 at 24-bit/48 kHz, with an alternative raw 80-channel capture mode recorded as WAV via the Konos Control application.

Go-to-market

Direct sales from the company's website with a waitlist for the forthcoming product generation; earlier units were placed with selected end users and trialled by film studios in the United States and the United Kingdom prior to general release. Industry visibility has come via NAB Show recognition and New Zealand technology media and podcast coverage.

Film and television production, broadcast and live sports audio teams, and sound engineers; the company has also targeted public safety and law enforcement, search-and-rescue, security/surveillance and industrial manufacturing users needing voice capture and two-way communication in high-noise environments, as well as researchers using raw multi-channel array output.

Geography

Headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand, with operations moved from Parnell to a manufacturing warehouse in Penrose. Early Konos units were used by entertainment studios in the United States and the United Kingdom.

History

Dotterel's technology grew out of noise-dampening systems it developed for drones used on Hollywood film sets, which led to the Konos microphone array. In 2022 the company raised $3 million led by Icehouse Ventures with participation from Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck, Sir Stephen Tindall's K1W1, NZVC and private investors including LanzaTech co-founder Sean Simpson, who chairs the board; the round was described as oversubscribed. Around the same time the company moved from a laboratory in Parnell to a manufacturing warehouse in Penrose, Auckland, with a team of 13 expected to reach 20 by the end of that year. The original Konos won NAB Show Product of the Year 2023 in the audio category, and the company subsequently developed Konos Digital as the next generation.

Risks & controversies

Published beam and polar-response figures are described by the company as nominal design responses rather than chamber measurements, with the caveat that individual units may vary; the 80-channel raw mode requires a Gigabit link and disables the standard five-channel AES67 stream while active. Product delivery timelines have extended, with the original Konos slated for general release in 2022 and the Konos Digital successor listed for shipping at the start of 2027.