All Things Audio -- topics from 2002 thru 2004

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

I haven't heard the MR8, but given that it's built with the same parts and manufacturer as the Zoom box, it's got to be pretty good. The Pre's are noisy on the Zoom, but all low priced pre's are noisy unless you've got a fairly hot mic and a fairly strong subject level.
Still, it's a PCM file, so if it's clean going in, it's clean coming out...
Seeing these just makes me laugh. When my band was on the road with ZZTop, we were in awe at the money Dusty had spent on a 'room' in the back of their bus, just for recording. And it didn't do near what these little suckers will do, for less than 1% of the cost.

[Martin Garrison]

A buddy and I did another mic comprarison. My oktava 012 with hyper capsule to his Neumann TLM103. We are in a fairly dead, but not very quiet room with both mics mounted eight inches away from my mouth, both up but at opposite sides. The oktava has a BBG on it, the Neumann has a pop screen in front of it. Both are run equal distances to a dual input preamp and recorded to seperate channels on the computer. The gain knobs are in the same position, which was a bit low, so I added 12db of gain to each track in Audition.

You can hear this comparison and a plug for donating to your local PBS station, by going to www.onequarterblue.com/mic_comparison enjoy.


P.S. I should mention that these clips were then converted to mp3 at 256kbs with a frequency limit set to 14000Hz.

[Diane Bogosian]

Saw on a site that SENN G2 was due out "in Spring 2004." Does anyone have any more specific info on release date and any opinions on whether this is worth waiting for? (in terms of quality, ease of use, portability).

PS Saw an 8/03 thread here that the SENN G2 was "out in a few weeks." What happened?

[Marco Leavitt]

Sound Devices has added new pictures of their 7 series recorders. They have a cool-looking white housing. They've also posted video clips and are now claiming a Q2 release date.

http://www.sounddevices.com/products/7.htm

[Dave Largent]

The 100 and 300 series are apparently available at
djmart now. Priced $50 more than the prior model. They have no word on the 500 series.
Curiously, their website does not list which
frequency range (i.e. A, B, or C) that they are offering.
B&H says April.
I think the size and weight reduction is worth the
wait. I guess the switch to AA batteries gives
a cost savings and longer run time.

[Aaron Koolen]

Title says it all really, but I'm looking for a good quality recorder. On paper the devices look damned amazing and I might be tempted to link them with a pda as a portable recording solution.

Cheers
Aaron

[Jan Roovers]

I am curious about this mic.
Who can tell me more about it. Or who has heard it?

http://www.cadmics.com/gxl1200.htm

[Marco Leavitt]

I just bought a Denecke AD-20 A/D converter from Core Sounds (sorry Chris, but none of the sponsors carry it) and when the box came it seemed a little heavy. I open it up, and dig around in the styrofoam peanuts. That's strange. There seems to be something else in there. Out comes not one, or even two, but SIX AD-20s. That's like two grand worth of gear! And the knucklehead FedEx guy had just left the box on top of the garbage can in front of our brownstone (I live in a pretty urban area). They seem like nice folks over at Core Sounds, so I'll send 'em back next week, but I'd be lying if I said unloading them on eBay didn't cross my mind.

Anyway, there's been nothing written about this unit in these forums, so I thought I'd write a little about my experience with it. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but it seems very rugged, and man is it quiet. I can't hear any self-noise. None. I know it's there, but this is my first experience recording with this type of gear and I'm really impressed. In fact, it makes me regret buying such an expensive mini-disc recorder since I'm bypassing its converter and pre-amp anyway. My advice to anyone looking to record on a mini-disc is buy the cheapest unit you can find on eBay (make sure it has the latest version of Atrac and manual recording) and spend the money on a good portable A/D converter. You'll end up spending about the same amount.

We're shooting tomorrow (Sunday) and I may use the unit. I usually never use new gear on a shoot, but I'd really like to give this a shot, so maybe I'll break my rule. I'll report back in here after I've used this thing for a while.

[Jan Roovers]

The E614 is a super-cardioid back-elektret condensor mic with a near flat frequencyresponce from 40 tot 20.000 Hz .

In Holland it is advised for € 199, incl. BTW. See Sennheiser.nl.

I have not seen it yet on the German site.


Message in English from Mojo Pie and in Dutch from Pro Audio Visie.

NB.: In between I found more specs on Sennheiser USA.

[Curt Kay]

First off, I tried to search but didn't find anything, if i've missed a post somewhere I'm sorry.

I'm a high school senior and I need to buy a indoor/outdoor mic for around 100 dollars if possible.

Things I'm looking for:
No echo indoors while filming
Low ambience noise when filming outdoors

I'm also purchasing a DXA-6 beachtek adapter from b&h.

It would also be nice to use the mic with a boom stick incase the situation arises.

Is there even such a mic on the market?

I have a feeling that I'm going to get laughed at... but I'm running out of time before my film is due for our film fest.

Thanks guys!

-Kay

[Frank Granovski]

A while back, Bryan suggested the Apex 191 for me. It seems like a good cardioid for $99 Canadian. I still need a shock mount for it, though. I'm feeling that tomorrow I'll have some luck with finding one, one that I can slip into a hot-shoe as well as mount onto my tripod (or a b-pole).

[Ming Dong]

Ever since I purchased my GL2 this past month, I've been searching for ways to improve the audio. I knew what a microphone was, but that was about the extent of my knowledge when it came to audio.

Then I found this excellent guide, Audio Systems Guide for Video Production, that answered all of my questions and then some.

Now, I feel like I slept at a Holiday Inn lastnight ;)

[Mickey Stroud]

I recorded an audio, edited in FCP 4 then output it to a AIF file at 16 bit, 48 kz, no compression. The file sounded good. Our conferernce call company wants the file sent to them as a mono, 8 bit WAV file. No matter what I do, when I convert the file to mono, 8 bit...it picks up unacceptable static or noise.

I used the latest version of Peak to convert the file.

Anyone have any suggestions.

Mickey

[Jay Massengill]

Find a new conference call company that can handle files that aren't unacceptably compromised by squashing it so badly.
Or negotiate with your present company to allow for a compressed file type and bitrate that is still reasonable quality.
There isn't much you can do if you have no choice but to drop to 8-bit.

[Jan Roovers]

Ram

Referring to your last contribution, my question is: What do you guys think? Is this mic good stuff for video?

What do you think?