Audiophile corner, warning: smells of electrons

[Don_prince]

New mic on it´s way 
https://www.amazon.es/Audio-Technica-ATR-3350-Micr%C3%B3fono-condensador-omnidireccional/dp/B002HJ9PTO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1476224410&sr=8-1&keywords=audio+technica+atr-3350

It´s a lavalier type condenser mic form Audio Technica which is omni directional.  As a audio recording (musician) I know Audio Technica and there quality which I used before. Amazon has a great price so I went for it.

The good part from this mic besides it´s quality is that it´s a condenser mic which get´s it´s power from a built in replaceable battery (button type), as per compared to other condenser mic´s which need "phantom" power and use a XLR type plug.  Condenser mic´s have better pick-up qualitys so a good sound is guaranteed.  With a set-up like this (headphones + mic) if one fails you don´t need to throw away the whole headset, and if you already have a good set of headphones (like me) you can use them aswell.

 

Care,

Red

It sounds great in the video. Just curious about battery life.

They rate the battery life at about 1000 hours.  That´s quite alot of hours of game play 

My concern is that the mic in question is for broad casting and such, im assuming your going to have a head set on as well because your mic will pick up the game sounds and other sounds around it. The proof will be in the pudding as they say. I think this has been made very complicated for a simple solution, you will have game and ts coming out at the same time 
 

Ya I was assuming that little mic was combined with some headphones he already has but ya if this is meant to be used with open speakers thats going to be a real problem.

Just have to see what Red has in mind.

Actualy it´s quite easy...

The mic has a clip which you can pin to your shirt or make some sort of extension from your headphones which isn´t really needed as it´s a condenser mic and they have a very good pick-up range/sensitivity.  Beeing omnidirectional means the capsule will pick-up in a almost 360º which might be the worst part of the mic as it will pick-up surrounding waves if there are any. It would have been better with a unidirectional capsule, but that also has a bad side as you have to have the mic right in front of your mouth, if you move a little to the side it will not pick-up your voice beacuse the polar pattren is unidirectional and only pick´s up what´s in front of it. That´s why singers in a studio use omnidirectional polar pattren capsules, but are in a sound proof booth. Can´t have everything 

I will use my AKG K77 headphones (run of the mil headphones, or can´s as we call them in the audio world.), or you can even use earplugs, which will be connected to my headphones sound card input, and will have the ATR 3350 mic pinned to my shirt via the clip, the mono jack of the AT will go to the input jack of my mic input of my soundcard (onboard, I have an external pro sound card too). Both inputs (headphone and mic) will be mixed via my onboard soundcard/soft which where I can boost gain of my mic if needed. Both signals wil be mixed but one (the mic) will be mono which I can use for one side of the headphones or split it to stereo (which is not a true stereo signal but a split mono signal which will come out on both sides of my headphones.

For this set-up a seperate set of headphone´s are needed and with the closed dome type so no sounds filter out (my AKG 171), I will try the K77 first, if I get sound leak´s from them and the AT mic pick´s them up, I will switch to the K171 which have no leaks as they are made for tracking. Or I can always use earbuds which don´t have much sound leak.  On open speakers well you know the mic will pick-up what comes out of the speakers and can also produce a bad feedback loop.

Not many people use opened speakers and a mic for the obvious reason, it will pick up your gameplay aswell.

This mic is not meant for open speakers, or any other mic beacuse as I said it will pick up what´s coming out of the speakers. It´s meant to be used with headphones like in radio broadcast and you can also use it with speakers (P.A. system) as long as you are at a distance from them so no feedback comes out and you don´t mind getting the speakers sound mixed with the mic input, or the speakers are in front of you pointing at the opposite direction as in a stage concert. Aerobic class, drummer backing vocales for example.  In the video he is using it on a camcorder where you would use it to pick-up ambient sound and or a speach.

I will have to see when they arrive (next week) but off hand I don´t see much of a problem with the gear I have as I can always switch headphones or lower the mic pick-up gain.  If I used TS with voice activated then yes I would forsee a problem beacuse of the omnidirectional polar pattren.  I´ll just have to tell everybody to shut up in the house but you can have the same problem with any other mic that has high sensitivity.  The issue is that most built in mic´s that come with headphones are so cheap that they don´t have much sensitivity and that´s why you need them closer to your mouth and hardly no noise get´s filterd in.

I can always run the mic into my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software (Cubase 8.5) and add a noise gate to trigger only when I talk or some compresion with side-chain and filter out what I don´t want. This would be in the case that I use TS with voice activation.

Spent many years over at the "Gearzluts" forum as a hobbiest in pro production, and I have more then 4K in instruments and inboard/outboard gear. I have even modded one of my own amplifiers and made my own stomp boxes/pedals out of sctratch in the past.

Although who know´s maybe I made a bad choice, will see went I get it.  The mechanics of mic´s/headphones are all about the same the difference is in quality.

Care,

Red

I smell another enthousiast... I run motu gear and sennheiser. my dayly driver is a hd650, my sound/capture card is an hdx-sdi... The workstation has a 2408mk3. I was searching for stuff to record our vinyl to PC years back and found the 2408mk3 cheap, from then on it all went downhill...


I would not worry about noise leaking from the headphones, I have no complaints with the hd650 and that thing is pretty noisy...

Hey Don that´s great to hear your in the never ending audio world 

My actual set-up is my 3rd set-up till date. My first audio card was a Creamware Pulsar.  That thing was so complicated to set-up that I got frustrated with the whole audio deal and left it parked for a year! It was routed to a Yamaha mixing board and I did get the whole set-up (Pentium III) working but the Pulsar was a real rescource hog, I still have the card somewhere.  Then I moved on to a TC Electronics Konnekt 24d, I like how TC makes stuff, but the card was new to the market and spent a year waiting and testing there forevermore faulty driver´s. It was paird to a set of Alesis MkII active monitors and Cakewalk (Roland) Sonar 6 DAW. I was lucky to sell the TC K24D and bought a Echo Audio Audiofire 8pre, which run´s through a pair of Yamaha MSP5 active monitors and through Cubase 8.5.  I had to drop Sonar 6 beacuse it dosen´t work on 64x systems.  Will never buy anything from Cakewalk again!  The bummer is that I recently found out that Echo Audio shut down, it´s a shame beacuse Echo Audio was made in the USA and very well built, but they will not put out any drivers above W8, only hardware support for now. For the price it has very good AD/DA converters, you can record a pro record with it. I know MOTU too, there was a time I was looking at the MOTU Traveler before I got the TC K24D.

It´s not that I wanted to brag, it´s just that audio recording and post production is a BIG world and not a easy one to learn. Gearzluts and Sound on Sound are great places to get knowledge but you have to spend ALOT of time reading!  There´s alot of things involved, from calibrating your monitors, sound proofing, mic placement, which mic, what audio chain, and a how to with  EQ´s, compresor, reverbs, delays, master meter´s reading just to name a few.

Regarding converting analog LP´s to digital, well Iam old school and find that analog sounds more to life, warmer as they say.  I have an old 1974 Sansui HiFi amp that when I put LP´s on it brings me back to me high school day´s    Digital CD´s get lost in volume, just walk away from a CD source and you will find that the CD sound gets lost too, just some bitter high frequencys left in the back ground, they just sound to steril to me, try that with a LP and a amp of it´s time to go with it.  Nothing wrong with digital audio, but sound engineers and soft/hard company´s are all looking for that 70`s sound trying to mimic those Neive Rupert mixinboards of the past.  Don´t tell the kid´s though, they be like what? 

[Red2112]

Good Idea Don 

[Don_prince]

I wasn't realy clean on how I justified the motu gear. For recording cheaper (on marktplaats which is a sort of craighslist) gear would do great but I had to have a pcie card. The reason for that is my favourite VSTI Hauptwerk, more on that in this topic I made earlyer: http://dogsofwarvu.com/forum/index.php/topic,2245.msg9050.html#msg9050 and for which I made this: http://dogsofwarvu.com/forum/index.php/topic,3260.msg13029.html#msg13029

The reason for pcie is latency. you want that as low as possible... and you want as les conversions as possible and as the pcie buss is directly connected to the cpu so you cant get closer...

Back in my old pirate days I also had reason, cubase  and absoluty noteworthy East West Quantum Leap. Oh on a dark day I wish I did not trow that in my trash can, way to expensive to be justifyable for a hobby.

Now I work with reaper and run hauptwerk within for impulse responce reveberation if I run a dry organ. I run a m-audio keystation 88pro with that. Not the best but it does the job and I got it for two figures, in order to get something better second hand I think you are far in the 3 figures...

My dad is a full on audiophile, He loves tubes and downstairs in the living room we still use his, at this point 40 year old, selfmade amplifyer, yes it still beats most of the new amps, not in power but in quality. Back in the day he wanted to buy a Phillips amplifyer but he could not get the money together and my grandpa would never allow it in the house so he went to the library to read and build himself a better one... It took him six years and he has told me once what all the costs where. He could have bought 3 of those phillips amplifyers... If you buy parts you dont realise how much you spent.

Lp's are awsome though we are most worried about the cassetes and the DCC's (yes we also have a lot of those) going bad. Recently we have been going balistic recording all the video8 cassetes to pc and some of them got realy bad... Some stuff we have on cassette you can not find on the internet, but its the LP's where we want the quality for, cassete quality is not that high,

Since you are in the bussines, I recorded previously with some weird program and reaper, not realy optimal for recording lp's and cassetes, they require constant monitoring and work afterwards splitting up and doing some filtering. Is there some software you would advice?

[Red2112]

Hey Don. I just asked you on your other thread what DAW you where using, now I know!  Used Reaper and Reason before. I bought Reason when it came out and not to long ago I gave it to a friend who dose dance music.

Glad to hear you and your dad like the old stuff. Iam a tech freak but wen it comes to sound, well give me tubes and the lot!  Can´t spend much money now on gear, Iam quite set-up for my personal small projects, if I get back to that LOL.  Been trying to replace my worn out nut on my Gibson LP STD for months now but I never get to it.  Some years ago I worked as production manager and/or tour manager for the SGAE (govermental legal rights authoring) here in Spain and also did stuff with named worlwide artist.  Since then I sort of forgot the music thing, once you work with them it´s not quite the same thing, the buisness inside is... well better not say it LOL! It was not for me!  Slowly I try to get back to music but practise is alot of hours if your demanding with yourself.

I did try to make my own stomp boxes, got some to work but not perfect, they can be real cheap if you buy the parts.  I like all this stuff and used to have links to schems and such. My guitar amp is a LaBoga 7/15 watt tube amp, there hand made in Poland, it also has a sim-out which for traking gives you the groove at least. I split the signal with a Y box so I always have the dry signal.  I also have a Warwick bass and a Yamaha LL6 acustic.  For pluggins, well Softube (TSAR-1) reverb and iZotope Alloy and some others from DDMF (6144)...

DDMF: (6144)
http://ddmf.eu/

Softube: (TSAR-1)
https://www.softube.com/buy.php

Klanghelm: (MJUC)
http://klanghelm.com/contents/main.php

Did have a Foscusrite Compounder, TC Electronics M-one XL and a Mackie 8ch. soundboard but sold them. I just use a Zoom G3 (delay´s), or my TC Electronics stomp boxes for live work.

Regarding restoration, maybe the iZotope RX-5 might do the trick.

Iam quite disconected with all this at the moment, but will get back on the bandwagon again soon.  Your input dose hype me up with this again! 

[Red2112]

What I call my gas pump station 



My old guitar, sold it...



Amp head...



and dust LOL...



My vintage Sansui (74) You have to love those metal dials, they just don´t make things like that anymore!

Yeap gear junky indeed 



Another Sansui (81) I picked up at a Flea Market for 30 bucks!



In mint condition as you can see...

[Red2112]

DDMF make some nice pluggins at reasonable prices.

His IIEQPro has just been updated...

v3.3 has been released, increasing the number of available bands to 24, plus improved graphics performance.

IIEQPro is the equalizer plugin you would probably take with you on the proverbial island. It’s features are:

24 fully parametric bands, with 27 state-of-the-art filter types per band
Adjusted for digital artefacts at high frequencies (don’t use any equalizer that doesn’t offer this!)
Seven Butterworth filter types with variable slopes from 6 to 60 dB/oct
Multitrack editing in one user interface
Very efficient user interaction (just one click to dial in a band)
Autolisten option
Sound processing in series or parallel
A/B option for quick comparison of alternative EQing choices
Very low CPU consumption but not at the expense of sound quality
High precision frequency analyzer (pre/post) with zoom and scroll functionality
Switchable to two-channel mode operation (L/R or Mid/Side)
Available in Windows VST (32/64 bit), Windows/Mac RTAS, Windows/Mac AAX and Mac VST/AU (32/64 bit, Intel OSX 10.5 and higher) format
That should be it, for the most part… by the way, if there’s any feature you might miss from IIEQPro, don’t hesitate to get in contact and I’ll do my best to make you happy.

If you are looking for an equalizer plugin that you can safely load on any track in your projects, this is it! IIEQPro contains everything that is expected from a software EQ in the 21st century, and then some. The only issue is: once you own IIEQPro there’ll be no more excuses…

DDM IIEQProF:
http://ddmf.eu/iieqpro-equalizer-plugin/

I have the 6144 and love it!

DDMF Home page:
http://ddmf.eu/

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ddmfthecompany/?fref=ts

 

 

[Don_prince]

DDMF make some nice pluggins at reasonable prices.

His IIEQPro has just been updated...

v3.3 has been released, increasing the number of available bands to 24, plus improved graphics performance.

IIEQPro is the equalizer plugin you would probably take with you on the proverbial island. It’s features are:

24 fully parametric bands, with 27 state-of-the-art filter types per band
Adjusted for digital artefacts at high frequencies (don’t use any equalizer that doesn’t offer this!)
Seven Butterworth filter types with variable slopes from 6 to 60 dB/oct
Multitrack editing in one user interface
Very efficient user interaction (just one click to dial in a band)
Autolisten option
Sound processing in series or parallel
A/B option for quick comparison of alternative EQing choices
Very low CPU consumption but not at the expense of sound quality
High precision frequency analyzer (pre/post) with zoom and scroll functionality
Switchable to two-channel mode operation (L/R or Mid/Side)
Available in Windows VST (32/64 bit), Windows/Mac RTAS, Windows/Mac AAX and Mac VST/AU (32/64 bit, Intel OSX 10.5 and higher) format
That should be it, for the most part… by the way, if there’s any feature you might miss from IIEQPro, don’t hesitate to get in contact and I’ll do my best to make you happy.

If you are looking for an equalizer plugin that you can safely load on any track in your projects, this is it! IIEQPro contains everything that is expected from a software EQ in the 21st century, and then some. The only issue is: once you own IIEQPro there’ll be no more excuses…

DDM IIEQProF:
http://ddmf.eu/iieqpro-equalizer-plugin/

I have the 6144 and love it!

DDMF Home page:
http://ddmf.eu/

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ddmfthecompany/?fref=ts

 

 

I need something like this, which is weird sounding from a guy who wants as les distortion as possible. Its just that some of the organs I play have problems with the pipe volume and need a boost in base, but you need to be carefull at what exact level.

I also use SIR impulse responce for dry organs. Awsome piece of software.