Darren Nemeth of Giant Squid Audio Labs has a new lav mic built for the iRivers. Great price and built here in the USA (plus a fellow small businessman like us)

http://www.giant-squid-audio-lab.com/gs/gs-mono1.htm

Thanks for heads-up Mark. Too bad their order now link is broken....

I just e-mailed Darren to make him aware of the link...

<<<-- Originally posted by Mark A. Foley : Darren Nemeth of Giant Squid Audio Labs has a new lav mic built for the iRivers. Great price and built here in the USA (plus a fellow small businessman like us)

http://www.giant-squid-audio-lab.com/gs/gs-mono1.htm -->>>

Built FOR the iRivers? Could you elaborate. Thanks.

From Darren's site:

The Iriver recorder requires a mono microphone to use a mono plug in order to record in the mono mode. If the Iriver detects a stereo plug on a mono mic with a wiring configuration on tip and ring it will automatically switch to stereo mode.

To avoid this the "+" of the mic has to be connected only to the the tip of the plug. Ring is left open. The Iriver thus detects it as a mono mic with a mono jack.

Our Iriver Omni Mono Microphones are wired this way.

Another different feature of this mic is the use of a more sensitive microphone capsule. It is the same one used on the Mini Mono Gold and Stereo Oak mics.

They are -35 decibels +4 decibels sensitive and have a 20 to 20,000 hz frequency range. Sound to noise ratio is > 62 dB.

Ideal for recording speech.

Compare it with the -44 dB +3dbB of sensitivity and sound to noise ratio of > 58dB of the capsules used in our standard omni mono mics.

The right angled plugs are nickle plated, no frills design. They will work well with the Iriver and for recording speech.

Only two other manufactures that I know of make 1/8 inch right angled plugs in the whole world. One charges $15 each with no quantity price breaks and the other has me on their long, 4 month long waiting list for 200 peices. :-/

You will not be disappoined in the quality of these mics. They are perfectly suitable for the Iriver recorder, will allow recording in the mono mode and are being used by some customers for wedding videogaphy.

Do these mics run off of plug in power? Would they work with minidisc?

Mark and Glen are hereby found guilty of bandwidth abuse. :)

Sorry, the site does clearly say they run off plug in power. Very intriguing. These look like an excellent deal.

woops

Darren is also an excellent guy to deal with. I ordered a couple of mono omni's the day before yesterday, and he sent me an email telling me how to mod them for the iRiver (since he did not discover the iRiver stereo/mono "issue" until yesterday) or an offer to send them back for modding.

He was also very helpful in selecting the right mic, as I was going to buy powered ones until he informed me that battery powered lav's (strangely) produce a signal 15db less than non-battery powered. Neat guy...a pleasure to support. And dang cheap too!

Here is a test I did with the Giant Squid against an Audio Technica...check it out!

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42297

Does anyone know which Squid lav would work best with a Sony minidisc recorder? I don't know if it has the same requirement as the iRiver wrt a special mono plug.

Good luck.

Dennis

Dennis,
You can use the standard omni mic listed at Darren's site.

Dennis, why not just ask Darren?

Darren Nemeth of Giant Squid Audio Labs has a new lav mic built for the iRivers. Great price and built here in the USA (plus a fellow small businessman like us)

http://www.giant-squid-audio-lab.com/gs/gs-mono1.htm

I've ordered one of these Microphones and would like to know does it need a power suppy?

No power supply needed. Just plug one into the iRiver and you're good to go.

Kevin

Thanks Kevin

no it does not.

Any samples you can give us so we can hear how well the combination is?

Does anyone know if the new iRiver-wired mono squids cause problems when used with "other" non-iRiver equipment? I'm thinking about buying some of the Squid mics, but I want them to be the most flexible (i.e., can be used with both the iRiver AND with other equipment).

Question #1: If I just plug the iRiver squid directly into my GS400 (no iRiver involved at all), will my cam be able to record the mono signal? Will it will record to one of the two channels (L or R) even though it has been wired with the funky iRiver wiring scheme?

Question #2: If I try to wire two different iRiver-wired mono squids into a stereo pair via a simple two-mono-to-stereo mini y-adapter from Radio Shack, will that work OK? Given the way the iRiver mono mics are wired, when I try to pair them into a stereo signal like that, will it work the same as two "normal" (non-iRiver versions) mono squid mics would have worked?

Basically, I would like to buy two Squid omni mono mics for my audio kit. And I would like both to work in the iRiver's extened recording time mono mode. BUT, I would also like to be able to pair the two together via y-adapter to get a stereo signal for some occasions, and on other occasions I'd like to pair one omni squid mono mics with my Rode Videomic, with the Squid on one Channel (say R) and the Rode on the other channel (say L). If I decide to go with the "iRiver-wiring" versions of the Squid mics, will I run into any problems using those mics in the other scenarios I describe above?

I think the answer is everything will work out fine, but for some reason I'm worried that the funky wiring might screw things up for other applications? Becuase it seems that it isn't just a rewiring to become a mono mic, it sounds like they had to change which pin was sending the signal (swap channels?). I'm a bit confused on exactly what the rewiring is/does?

Thanks in advance for any help provided...

Bill you should contact Darren directly. I just bought some stereo squids from him myself, nice mics, and Darren's been very helpful at answering questions.

I also emailed him to see if he'll sign up on DV Info and answer some of our questions on the forums.