with respect; please learn to use the return key.

Ty Ford




On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 07:15:14 -0500, spud wrote
(in article ):

Ok, if you're wondering what to do with your war profits you should
march right out right now and buy a really honkin' preamp 'cause you
will definitely need it with this mic.
First impressions: This is one big bastaad, pally. Rolling it
sensually in your hand, feeling it's heft and weight you immediately
think, "crime novel".
"Gustav sat, and peering through the screen could not help seeing the
odious Mr. Schneglin's contemptuous sneer as he counted the day's
profits. His filthy, grizzled hands fingered the widow Blechlin's own
wedding broach, taken to pawn for a farthing for food and some small
portion of fuel, she had wept as she left and caused him to snicker
and scratch himself. A farmers rusted castrating tools- no doubt
stolen. Great plates of silver lay near a scale, a drunken louts
forgotten fortune, he hadn't even taken the ticket. "How can such a
man exist", thought Gustav, "how can such evil be permitted- he and
his kind, sucking the blood of human misery,.. it is odious, odious!",
and there, there before him, as if by holy miracle, on a bent stand
was the mighty Nady RSM-2 figure of 8 ribbon microphone,.. taking it's
sturdy construction his both his trembling hands he raised it high
over his head and advanced, eyes glittering as he wheezed through his
greasy beard and then,.. and then,.."
Ok, back to our movie. This is my first ribbon mic and my first figure
8, which I was pretty excited about. I guess this thing is for
recording really loud instruments. Drums, big amps, marching bands? It
doesn't have much signal, which I gather is typical of ribbons.
I plugged it in to a Mackie 1202VLZ. Trim and channel pot both at
about 3:00. This was the only way to get any signal at all. You could
hear a lot of hiss, from the mic, preamp and channel, I don't know but
it didn't seem usable for most things. I didn't track anything.
Tried the Speck Pre5. Mo' better but still had to be jacked almost all
the way up. Noticeable hiss to get signal from an acoustic guitar or
mumbly singer. Kind of like an analog tape machine noise in the
background. Not thrilling.
Tried the BAE 312 clone. Less hiss than the Mackie, more than the
Pre5. All these feed a Lucid 9624 at 24 bit with the input at 3:00.
All produced between -20 and -8 levels.
The sound: I'm probably deaf. The Nellie Mckay cd's the only recent
thing that doesn't hurt my ears anymore. This mic doesn't sound
ribbony to me. The result sounded like a guitar only boomier than
normal. Maybe you only notice the silky smooth aspect on mandolins or
violin or saxophones or screechy things. In order to get a usable
signal it was about 3 or 4 inches away from the neck/body joint of a
Taylor big baby acoustic; an instrument with a very small voice. Same
deal singing. I can't sing very loud, which is probably for the best.
Humongous proximity/bass problems at this distance. Cutting the bass
with software just made everything worse, the sound sucked. I could
have tried the Speck EQ on the way in and got some more signal too but
I haven't gotten that far yet.
Tried using it with a small diaphragm condenser in the typical "solo
guitar/singer at the same time" setup. I was hoping for some kind of
isolation miracle using the figure 8 on vocal with the guitar in the
null but this was disappointing too. The cardioid condenser pointed
down at a 45 degree angle very close to the neck joint rejected the
vocal many times more effectively and still gave acceptable sound. The
vocal was too boomy to be useful and had plenty of guitar in the
track. The phase problems were nothing like as bad as you would get
with two cardioid mics, however.
Set it up in kind of a mid/side arrangement without the matrixing part
of the equation. (never quite grasped this). I just played into the
null with an Elation 201 facing me over the top of the Nady so the
figure 8 picks up the room sides and the 201 picks up the guitar. This
sounded great but I don't know why. If I soloed the figure 8 it
sounded tiny and just like the echo, flutter and pong of a ****ty room
(which it is) but when I brought it up with the condenser the bass
totally tightened up and sounded natural (better than the guitar
really sounds actually) focused, cooler, punchy etc. more like a
record. If I soloed the Elation track after that it sounded weaker and
less musical by itself. I think this could be the set up for more or
less natural sound, assuming a good room, instrument and player.
Guess that's it for first impressions, plenty to learn from so far.
If anyone has any suggestions on how to get more out of this thing,
especially the isolation part I'd appreciate it. Well, the spell check
is complete, I had 40 mistakes,..





-- Ty Ford's equipment reviews, audio samples, rates and other audiocentric
stuff are at www.tyford.com

with respect; please learn to use the return key.

Ty Ford




On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 07:15:14 -0500, spud wrote
(in article ):

Ok, if you're wondering what to do with your war profits you should
march right out right now and buy a really honkin' preamp 'cause you
will definitely need it with this mic.
First impressions: This is one big bastaad, pally. Rolling it
sensually in your hand, feeling it's heft and weight you immediately
think, "crime novel".
"Gustav sat, and peering through the screen could not help seeing the
odious Mr. Schneglin's contemptuous sneer as he counted the day's
profits. His filthy, grizzled hands fingered the widow Blechlin's own
wedding broach, taken to pawn for a farthing for food and some small
portion of fuel, she had wept as she left and caused him to snicker
and scratch himself. A farmers rusted castrating tools- no doubt
stolen. Great plates of silver lay near a scale, a drunken louts
forgotten fortune, he hadn't even taken the ticket. "How can such a
man exist", thought Gustav, "how can such evil be permitted- he and
his kind, sucking the blood of human misery,.. it is odious, odious!",
and there, there before him, as if by holy miracle, on a bent stand
was the mighty Nady RSM-2 figure of 8 ribbon microphone,.. taking it's
sturdy construction his both his trembling hands he raised it high
over his head and advanced, eyes glittering as he wheezed through his
greasy beard and then,.. and then,.."
Ok, back to our movie. This is my first ribbon mic and my first figure
8, which I was pretty excited about. I guess this thing is for
recording really loud instruments. Drums, big amps, marching bands? It
doesn't have much signal, which I gather is typical of ribbons.
I plugged it in to a Mackie 1202VLZ. Trim and channel pot both at
about 3:00. This was the only way to get any signal at all. You could
hear a lot of hiss, from the mic, preamp and channel, I don't know but
it didn't seem usable for most things. I didn't track anything.
Tried the Speck Pre5. Mo' better but still had to be jacked almost all
the way up. Noticeable hiss to get signal from an acoustic guitar or
mumbly singer. Kind of like an analog tape machine noise in the
background. Not thrilling.
Tried the BAE 312 clone. Less hiss than the Mackie, more than the
Pre5. All these feed a Lucid 9624 at 24 bit with the input at 3:00.
All produced between -20 and -8 levels.
The sound: I'm probably deaf. The Nellie Mckay cd's the only recent
thing that doesn't hurt my ears anymore. This mic doesn't sound
ribbony to me. The result sounded like a guitar only boomier than
normal. Maybe you only notice the silky smooth aspect on mandolins or
violin or saxophones or screechy things. In order to get a usable
signal it was about 3 or 4 inches away from the neck/body joint of a
Taylor big baby acoustic; an instrument with a very small voice. Same
deal singing. I can't sing very loud, which is probably for the best.
Humongous proximity/bass problems at this distance. Cutting the bass
with software just made everything worse, the sound sucked. I could
have tried the Speck EQ on the way in and got some more signal too but
I haven't gotten that far yet.
Tried using it with a small diaphragm condenser in the typical "solo
guitar/singer at the same time" setup. I was hoping for some kind of
isolation miracle using the figure 8 on vocal with the guitar in the
null but this was disappointing too. The cardioid condenser pointed
down at a 45 degree angle very close to the neck joint rejected the
vocal many times more effectively and still gave acceptable sound. The
vocal was too boomy to be useful and had plenty of guitar in the
track. The phase problems were nothing like as bad as you would get
with two cardioid mics, however.
Set it up in kind of a mid/side arrangement without the matrixing part
of the equation. (never quite grasped this). I just played into the
null with an Elation 201 facing me over the top of the Nady so the
figure 8 picks up the room sides and the 201 picks up the guitar. This
sounded great but I don't know why. If I soloed the figure 8 it
sounded tiny and just like the echo, flutter and pong of a ****ty room
(which it is) but when I brought it up with the condenser the bass
totally tightened up and sounded natural (better than the guitar
really sounds actually) focused, cooler, punchy etc. more like a
record. If I soloed the Elation track after that it sounded weaker and
less musical by itself. I think this could be the set up for more or
less natural sound, assuming a good room, instrument and player.
Guess that's it for first impressions, plenty to learn from so far.
If anyone has any suggestions on how to get more out of this thing,
especially the isolation part I'd appreciate it. Well, the spell check
is complete, I had 40 mistakes,..





-- Ty Ford's equipment reviews, audio samples, rates and other audiocentric
stuff are at www.tyford.com

In article blatherskite writes:

First impressions: This is one big bastaad

I saw it at the AES show and was impressed with its bulk. Didn't hear
it other than to talk at it and listen on headphones. Couldn't tell a
thing other than that it worked as a microphone.

I plugged it in to a Mackie 1202VLZ. Trim and channel pot both at
about 3:00. This was the only way to get any signal at all.

That's about 45 dB of gain, not a whole lot. No wonder you were having
problems getting a usable signal out of it. Did you use the official
Mackie Level Setting Procedure" of turning the trim up until you got a
usable reading on the VU meter with the Solo button pressed, or are
you one of those people who think that if you have to turn a control
up all the way, there's something wrong, so you never do it?

You could
hear a lot of hiss, from the mic, preamp and channel,

The Mackie isn't the quietest preamp in the world, but check it again
with as much gain as you can use all the way up at the front end. You
may be able to improve on this.

Noticeable hiss to get signal from an acoustic guitar or
mumbly singer.

I probably wouldn't choose this sort of mic for recording an acoustic
guitar unless it was a bright, jangly, heavy-handed style. And I
wouldn't bother recording a mumbly singer at all, but some of them
have character when they get close enough to the mic. Take the marbles
out of your mouth, take a shot of Listerine, put up a pop screen, and
mumble away.

Tried the BAE 312 clone. Less hiss than the Mackie, more than the
Pre5. All these feed a Lucid 9624 at 24 bit with the input at 3:00.
All produced between -20 and -8 levels.

Again I see that you're expressing gain in terms of clock time. Well,
actually level between -20 and -8 (assuming you're talking dBFS) is
pretty fair. I wouldn't complain about that (and don't). But what's
the hiss level at that setting? If it's -30, then you have something
to worry about. If it's -75, then you don't. If it's somewhere in
between, check out what hiss and noise level you get with another
microphone in the same chain with the same settings.

Set it up in kind of a mid/side arrangement without the matrixing part
of the equation. (never quite grasped this). I just played into the
null with an Elation 201 facing me over the top of the Nady so the
figure 8 picks up the room sides and the 201 picks up the guitar. This
sounded great but I don't know why.

I don't know why either, but if it works, that's good. It isn't
stereo, that's for sure.

If I soloed the figure 8 it
sounded tiny and just like the echo, flutter and pong of a ****ty room
(which it is)

That's about what I'd expect from a ribbon that's picking up the room
and not the source. That much is pretty good.

Hey, I'm not defending the mic - I have no reason to (or not), but
check your gain structure and see if you can find the optimum setting
for the best signal-to-noise ratio. You may find it to be more useful,
or at least find more things that it doesn't work on because of the
sound and pattern rather than just because your recordings are too
noisy.

So I guess you haven't returned it yet. That's good.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article blatherskite writes:

First impressions: This is one big bastaad

I saw it at the AES show and was impressed with its bulk. Didn't hear
it other than to talk at it and listen on headphones. Couldn't tell a
thing other than that it worked as a microphone.

I plugged it in to a Mackie 1202VLZ. Trim and channel pot both at
about 3:00. This was the only way to get any signal at all.

That's about 45 dB of gain, not a whole lot. No wonder you were having
problems getting a usable signal out of it. Did you use the official
Mackie Level Setting Procedure" of turning the trim up until you got a
usable reading on the VU meter with the Solo button pressed, or are
you one of those people who think that if you have to turn a control
up all the way, there's something wrong, so you never do it?

You could
hear a lot of hiss, from the mic, preamp and channel,

The Mackie isn't the quietest preamp in the world, but check it again
with as much gain as you can use all the way up at the front end. You
may be able to improve on this.

Noticeable hiss to get signal from an acoustic guitar or
mumbly singer.

I probably wouldn't choose this sort of mic for recording an acoustic
guitar unless it was a bright, jangly, heavy-handed style. And I
wouldn't bother recording a mumbly singer at all, but some of them
have character when they get close enough to the mic. Take the marbles
out of your mouth, take a shot of Listerine, put up a pop screen, and
mumble away.

Tried the BAE 312 clone. Less hiss than the Mackie, more than the
Pre5. All these feed a Lucid 9624 at 24 bit with the input at 3:00.
All produced between -20 and -8 levels.

Again I see that you're expressing gain in terms of clock time. Well,
actually level between -20 and -8 (assuming you're talking dBFS) is
pretty fair. I wouldn't complain about that (and don't). But what's
the hiss level at that setting? If it's -30, then you have something
to worry about. If it's -75, then you don't. If it's somewhere in
between, check out what hiss and noise level you get with another
microphone in the same chain with the same settings.

Set it up in kind of a mid/side arrangement without the matrixing part
of the equation. (never quite grasped this). I just played into the
null with an Elation 201 facing me over the top of the Nady so the
figure 8 picks up the room sides and the 201 picks up the guitar. This
sounded great but I don't know why.

I don't know why either, but if it works, that's good. It isn't
stereo, that's for sure.

If I soloed the figure 8 it
sounded tiny and just like the echo, flutter and pong of a ****ty room
(which it is)

That's about what I'd expect from a ribbon that's picking up the room
and not the source. That much is pretty good.

Hey, I'm not defending the mic - I have no reason to (or not), but
check your gain structure and see if you can find the optimum setting
for the best signal-to-noise ratio. You may find it to be more useful,
or at least find more things that it doesn't work on because of the
sound and pattern rather than just because your recordings are too
noisy.

So I guess you haven't returned it yet. That's good.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1101044223k@trad...

I saw it at the AES show and was impressed with its bulk.

Also useful for telling the health of bowel movements. Now to find out if it
floats.

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1101044223k@trad...

I saw it at the AES show and was impressed with its bulk.

Also useful for telling the health of bowel movements. Now to find out if it
floats.

In article blatherskite writes:

No, did it after I couldn't hear anything. I thought it was supposed
to peak around zero, that's about 3:30 on the trim but the background
hiss was too loud to be usable.

Well, it may be that the microphone has a lot of self-noise (unlikely
since it's passive) or your threshold of "hiss too loud to be usable"
is greater than mine. It's not at at all abmormal to hear some hiss
when you turn up the gain. The important thing is whether it's
significant when the music is playing.

Mackie seems to have written their own
brand new standard of db reference with the VLZ series boards. I
couldn't make anything out of it no matter how many times I read the
manual.

It's really a lot simpler than what they make it sound. 0 VU on the
meter is 0 dBu from the single-ended outputs, and +4 dBu from the
differential (XLR) outputs.

It's about -55. The sound is just lacks power. It's not loud enough at
the source (me) for one thing and in order to get even that signal the
mic's proximity effect is too noticable. It's for much louder sources
as far as I can see.

It sounds to me like you need more gain for that mic, which is what
I'd expect. See if you can get your hands on a Great River NV series
preamp. This has 70 dB of nice, quiet gain. On the other hand, nice as
it is, it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy a $1500 preamp to use a
$300 mic unless you REALLY love the mic.

No, I put the mixer channel pan pots in the center on playback for
this purpose. Is there a correct way to get a real stereo with one
figure 8 and one cardiod?

What you did was make a sort of omni mic (with bumps in the pattern
depending on the ratio of cardioid-to-bi level in the mix) out of the
combination. The Neumann web site has an article on M-S operation.
Basically what you do is split one mic (usually the bi-directional
mic) to two mixer channels with a Y cable, and reverse the polarity of
one of those channels. You'll need an XLR polarity reversing adapter
for your Mackie mixer, or just make up a special Y cable. Pan those
two channels full left and full right. Then connect the other
(cardioid) mic to a third channel and pan that to the center. Mix to
taste. The two splits should be at the same level, and the balance
between those channels and the mono (center-panned) channel determines
the width of the stereo image.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article blatherskite writes:

No, did it after I couldn't hear anything. I thought it was supposed
to peak around zero, that's about 3:30 on the trim but the background
hiss was too loud to be usable.

Well, it may be that the microphone has a lot of self-noise (unlikely
since it's passive) or your threshold of "hiss too loud to be usable"
is greater than mine. It's not at at all abmormal to hear some hiss
when you turn up the gain. The important thing is whether it's
significant when the music is playing.

Mackie seems to have written their own
brand new standard of db reference with the VLZ series boards. I
couldn't make anything out of it no matter how many times I read the
manual.

It's really a lot simpler than what they make it sound. 0 VU on the
meter is 0 dBu from the single-ended outputs, and +4 dBu from the
differential (XLR) outputs.

It's about -55. The sound is just lacks power. It's not loud enough at
the source (me) for one thing and in order to get even that signal the
mic's proximity effect is too noticable. It's for much louder sources
as far as I can see.

It sounds to me like you need more gain for that mic, which is what
I'd expect. See if you can get your hands on a Great River NV series
preamp. This has 70 dB of nice, quiet gain. On the other hand, nice as
it is, it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy a $1500 preamp to use a
$300 mic unless you REALLY love the mic.

No, I put the mixer channel pan pots in the center on playback for
this purpose. Is there a correct way to get a real stereo with one
figure 8 and one cardiod?

What you did was make a sort of omni mic (with bumps in the pattern
depending on the ratio of cardioid-to-bi level in the mix) out of the
combination. The Neumann web site has an article on M-S operation.
Basically what you do is split one mic (usually the bi-directional
mic) to two mixer channels with a Y cable, and reverse the polarity of
one of those channels. You'll need an XLR polarity reversing adapter
for your Mackie mixer, or just make up a special Y cable. Pan those
two channels full left and full right. Then connect the other
(cardioid) mic to a third channel and pan that to the center. Mix to
taste. The two splits should be at the same level, and the balance
between those channels and the mono (center-panned) channel determines
the width of the stereo image.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article znr1101130102k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:
In article blatherskite writes:

No, did it after I couldn't hear anything. I thought it was supposed
to peak around zero, that's about 3:30 on the trim but the background
hiss was too loud to be usable.

Well, it may be that the microphone has a lot of self-noise (unlikely
since it's passive) or your threshold of "hiss too loud to be usable"
is greater than mine. It's not at at all abmormal to hear some hiss
when you turn up the gain. The important thing is whether it's
significant when the music is playing.

Some cheap ribbons do have a lot of self-noise, due to the thermal noise
in the transformer. Especially in the low-Z primary. It is very difficult
to make ribbon mike transformers. The Shure 315 is probably the poster child
for high thermal noise transformers.

That said, I would want to try this thing on a preamp that has reasonably
high gain before dumping on it. The Mackie 1604VLZ is not exactly the best
preamp device of all time.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article znr1101130102k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:
In article blatherskite writes:

No, did it after I couldn't hear anything. I thought it was supposed
to peak around zero, that's about 3:30 on the trim but the background
hiss was too loud to be usable.

Well, it may be that the microphone has a lot of self-noise (unlikely
since it's passive) or your threshold of "hiss too loud to be usable"
is greater than mine. It's not at at all abmormal to hear some hiss
when you turn up the gain. The important thing is whether it's
significant when the music is playing.

Some cheap ribbons do have a lot of self-noise, due to the thermal noise
in the transformer. Especially in the low-Z primary. It is very difficult
to make ribbon mike transformers. The Shure 315 is probably the poster child
for high thermal noise transformers.

That said, I would want to try this thing on a preamp that has reasonably
high gain before dumping on it. The Mackie 1604VLZ is not exactly the best
preamp device of all time.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Interesting, I can't see it as usable if it's hissing and anything
past about 3:00 is pretty snakey on my unit.

Well, there are quieter preamps on the market. You use an API for color, not
transparency.

I was told most people want the -20
pad modified to -30 or -40 to turn it down.

I'd want mine modified to something less, like -10, which is usually all that's
needed to keep a hot source from from overloading an ADC. I'm not much fond of
the sound alteration when the pad is switched in, though.

Scott Fraser

Please let us know your conclusions.

C. Pereira


On 22 Nov 2004, Scott Dorsey wrote:


In article znr1101130102k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:
In article blatherskite writes:

No, did it after I couldn't hear anything. I thought it was supposed
to peak around zero, that's about 3:30 on the trim but the background
hiss was too loud to be usable.

Well, it may be that the microphone has a lot of self-noise (unlikely
since it's passive) or your threshold of "hiss too loud to be usable"
is greater than mine. It's not at at all abmormal to hear some hiss
when you turn up the gain. The important thing is whether it's
significant when the music is playing.

Some cheap ribbons do have a lot of self-noise, due to the thermal noise
in the transformer. Especially in the low-Z primary. It is very difficult
to make ribbon mike transformers. The Shure 315 is probably the poster child
for high thermal noise transformers.

That said, I would want to try this thing on a preamp that has reasonably
high gain before dumping on it. The Mackie 1604VLZ is not exactly the best
preamp device of all time.
--scott