Topic: EDM Binaural, DPA 4061 (Rename of: Suggestions on Tiny/Small cardioid)

[edmaddict]

Looking for small the smallest cardioids I can find.  So far I haven't found any smaller than 19mm x 146mm.

If you know of any smaller ones, please share.

P.S. I wish there was a database of mic information we could all search on.

Edited 2015.12.11 Renamed thread to reflect its content.

[John Willett]

For binaural you need omni mics, not cardioid, in a dummy head (or your head).

Ptobably the smallest and most unobtrusive is the Sennheiser MKE 1.

DPA 4060 are also good.

[nulldogmas]

Using DPA 4061s (love the size) but the bass is saturating the signal.

You can't EQ it in post? I can think of a lot of reasons to use cards, but "I'm getting too much bass" shouldn't be one of them.

[ilduclo]

or get a battery box with roll off. I haven't had too much bass from my dpa's. interested in the rest of you set up, and can you upload a small sample? I've recorded a lot of bass heavy bands with my 4061's and haven't felt they were overly bassy.....

[edmaddict]

You can't EQ it in post? I can think of a lot of reasons to use cards, but "I'm getting too much bass" shouldn't be one of them.

I have been editing in post but it's extremely tedious and difficult work. The bass in my recordings is 40-60db louder than frequencies above 1,000Hz

I'm recording EDM (Electronic Dance Music) the bass is extremely loud, yet a _very_ important to the recording.
I have tried a bass rolloff filter 6db/octave starting at 120 Hz. This ruins the bass though.

[edmaddict]

or get a battery box with roll off. I haven't had too much bass from my dpa's. interested in the rest of you set up, and can you upload a small sample? I've recorded a lot of bass heavy bands with my 4061's and haven't felt they were overly bassy.....

Would love to get your/other people's opinions.  I will post a sample tonight PST.

[rhinowing]

or get a battery box with roll off. I haven't had too much bass from my dpa's. interested in the rest of you set up, and can you upload a small sample? I've recorded a lot of bass heavy bands with my 4061's and haven't felt they were overly bassy.....

Would love to get your/other people's opinions.  I will post a sample tonight PST.

I'd be very curious if you manage to get good results. I've been trying to do a few shows and the bass is several orders of magnitude stronger than anything else I've recorded, and there are very few members on TS who listen to / record the genre.

For reference, I tried to tape a Bassnectar show at a festival in June. His soundcheck was causing the ground to shake 3/4 of a mile away. Will attempt to record Excision in March if I can figure out how to not get a distorted mess of a tape...

[hi and lo]

Using DPA 4061s (love the size) but the bass is saturating the signal.

You can't EQ it in post? I can think of a lot of reasons to use cards, but "I'm getting too much bass" shouldn't be one of them.

While 'EQ in post' is generally sound advice (for what we do), there are still many good reasons to use a low-cut filter in the recording chain. In this particular case (406x mics + EDM), I would say a low-cut filter is definitely needed, otherwise you're going to compromise the headroom of all other frequencies and end-up with recording that isn't listenable without post-processing.

I would say that the natural low-frequency roll-off of cardioids is a huge benefit over omnis for recording loud rock / edm / etc, in addition to being directional, but YMMV.

I have tried a bass rolloff filter 6db/octave starting at 120 Hz. This ruins the bass though.

6 dB at 120 Hz is criminal. Of course it sounds bad. I can only assume you are using a certain vendor's product that popularized this value almost 20 years ago. It was a half-way decent choice for Panasonic WM 60/61 capsules, but not at all appropriate for 406x microphones. I would recommend something like 80 Hz.

What recorder and input are you using? Depending on your recorder's input impedance, the roll-off value might not be 120 Hz at all. It needs to be calculated for each specific device and input impedance.

[edmaddict]

Best of intentions to respond sooner. I apologize for the delay. (Having an issue attaching samples, working on it.)

Via software I found, HPF @80Hz works very well.
Now, I have to find an 80Hz 12 or 24dB/octave HPF.  And as I understand it, I need the impedance values for my equipment chain to build a correct HPF.

Thank you so much for the help and suggestions. I've learned so much the hard way (i.e. most recordings are garbage). Would be nice to meetup with some tapers in Seattle.

[edmaddict]

NOTE: Recorded with Core Sound Binaurals (the standard ones) without HPF.
Too large to attach to message, sharing from dropbox.

Only DPA recording is corrupted (i.e. the 20dB from the maker of said mics shorted across left & right channels.) That was a real disappointment. Though I did learn some restoration/mastering techniques it's still a fairly poor result. (For anyone curious, the best solution I ended up at was a 1ms shift in one channel and a stereo crossover of 50/50.)

If these samples are too small I'd be happy to provide larger ones, pm me.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oa5kxxyzqhagqtj/edm-sample-01.wav?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dwngfbghd9qlxo3/edm-sample-02.wav?dl=0

I do have a recording where I used the HPF @120Hz 6dB. Took me 5 months to restore it. My favorite show to date.

[Len Moskowitz (Core Sound)]

If your mic pre-amp is overloading because of the very loud bass, you have two choices:

1. Roll off the bass
2. Attenuate the entire signal before the audio hits the mic pre front end so that you don't overload the mic pre.

If you don't like the sound when you roll off the bass, then you're left with #2.

Get an attenuator cable of the right value and you're set.

[earmonger]

My understanding, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, is that an attenuator will send less current to the mic and will thus degrade its dynamic response--i.e., the mic itself will overload sooner with all that bass. The HPF is in the chain after the mic has already overloaded.

I think the solution is to record mic-->battery box-->Line-in at a rather low input volume. Power to the mic to handle the bass, low input to make sure there's headroom.

The DPAs may just be too sensitive for the subwoofer assault. I use Church Audio which are low sensitivity. Autechre forever.

[Len Moskowitz (Core Sound)]

My understanding, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, is that an attenuator will send less current to the mic and will thus degrade its dynamic response--i.e., the mic itself will overload sooner with all that bass. The HPF is in the chain after the mic has already overloaded.

The problem he noted was not mic overload but rather mic pre overload (what some folks here call "brickwalling"). An attenuator cable between the battery box and the recorder will completely solve that problem, and won't affect the mic powering scheme in any way.

Feeding the Line level inputs instead of the Mic inputs can similarly solve the problem.

[hi and lo]

My understanding, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, is that an attenuator will send less current to the mic and will thus degrade its dynamic response--i.e., the mic itself will overload sooner with all that bass.

This is true only if the attenuation is placed between the microphones and power supply. Not an issue when an external battery box is used, but impossible with PiP.

[robotaper]

DPA 4061's are great mics if you are either a)wearing them on your head/hat, or 2)using a Jecklin Disc type of apparatus to gain separation between the Omni mics.