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Gear / Technical Help => Microphones & Setup => Topic started by: heathen on October 20, 2017, 01:18:45 PM

Title: Countryman B3 protective caps
Post by: heathen on October 20, 2017, 01:18:45 PM
Has anyone tried the various protective caps for the Countryman B3, other than the stock caps?  I'm considering giving the "bright" caps a try to bring out the high end a bit more (see attached chart).  I'm curious, though, if the caps work as advertised or if it would be better to just EQ a recording with the stock caps.  EQ'ing is pretty intimidating to me, though, because I have almost no clue what I'm doing and when I try it I usually just make things sound worse.
Title: Re: Countryman B3 protective caps
Post by: morst on October 21, 2017, 09:27:22 PM
YUK!

If you don't like using EQ, then don't use these! I think they'd be for speech intelligibility, not musical balance.

This is like using an EQ with only one setting. HOPE YOU LIKE IT!??!
 :tomato:

You would definitely be better off attempting to EQ a few of your existing recordings with those same EQ settings to see how you really like +4 or +8dB of boost in that range!!
The chart for Very Bright looks like +5dB/octave, centered at 16kHz!? 6dB is a more normal filter number... Try 3dB/octave to imitate the +4?! If you have a parametric EQ, try starting with a Q setting around 0.5, which is equal to a filter which is 2 octaves wide. (q is simply the inverse of the filter width in octaves)



Has anyone tried the various protective caps for the Countryman B3, other than the stock caps?  I'm considering giving the "bright" caps a try to bring out the high end a bit more (see attached chart).  I'm curious, though, if the caps work as advertised or if it would be better to just EQ a recording with the stock caps.  EQ'ing is pretty intimidating to me, though, because I have almost no clue what I'm doing and when I try it I usually just make things sound worse.
Title: Re: Countryman B3 protective caps
Post by: Gutbucket on October 30, 2017, 09:14:57 AM
I had only the "bright" high-boost grids when I was playing around with the B3s.  Didn't like them, found them peaky and resonant sounding, and preferred using no grid and EQing to find the right top balance.  I never had low-boost grids for them but figure those would probably be a good middle-ground starting point.  That's partly from my experience using the DPA 4060/4061 where the low-boost grid is my preferred baseline over either the high-boost grid or no grid.