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Which mics do the MiniMe really compliment?

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bisforboogie:


Greetings all.  Long time listener, first time caller, etc...

So a friend grabbed an Apogee MiniMe for...well, nothing (I was about to type 'next to nothing' until I recalled there was no 'next-to' about it) and we were chatting and I told him that I'd never run one but that my totally uninformed impression was that the A/D was highly reputable in its day and probably still is and that I'd only ever heard grumbling about the preamps - i.e. warm or too-warm or loose-bottomed or 'junk in the trunk'...and so on.

So...given that between our lockers he could run a variety of different mic styles in testing this thing at upcoming shows, what mics (and techniques if you have such thoughts) do y'all find go best or match up with the minime and what its preamps bring to the table?

Testing will be bars and small theaters of the usual variety and for now I imagine he'll use the minime for both pre & a/d duties going into a spare deck (both our spares are dr100mkii, as it happens).

(And all this time, I'm plowing through pages of older accounts of minime-ness but would love to hear your direct opinions...especially since the tech has changed so much since the box came out)

Thanks a million times and also for all the help you didn't even know you were giving me over the past 5 years of my membership here!

-chad

noahbickart:
The problems people seem to have with the Mini-me are largely ergonomic. The only thing it does poorly is interface with a fixed gain preamp, as many people would prefer to bypass the preamps if possible.

Schoeps> sonosax> mini-me is a winning combination. AKG and MG have also sounded good into the mini-me. It has the "apogee" house sound, and basically sounds goo with everything. I never messed with the internal limiters, though I bet they would be far superior to any digi ones these days.

I got rid of mine for two reasons: I didn't like the size and shape compared with everything else I ran, and my bag is so much lighter without a separate AD stage and big 9v battery.

rigpimp:
This is really too subjective in my opinion.  Let "your ears" be the guide.  Only you know what they like.

https://archive.org/details/etree?and[]=Mini-me

Happy listening!

DSatz:
Your question seems to be based on several unstated assumptions. A common one (though I can only guess, since the assumptions are implied rather than stated) is that every preamp has a certain sonic "character" or "signature", and this character should be balanced by choosing microphones that have an opposing / contrasting "character" or "signature". At least, that's how I've seen this viewpoint expressed most often.

To me, though, that outlook seems to take a problem "for granted" and treat it as unavoidable, in the same way that certain diseases were taken for granted before we understood their causes and prevention. I don't mean to make light of the fact that many people today still die of preventable illnesses. I just want to say that our outlook, and our consequent actions, ought to change when we have a reasonable understanding of what causes a thing.

Microphones that have higher output impedance, and/or an output impedance that varies significantly across the audio range, interact with the preamps they're used with (and sound quality is affected by that interaction) much more than microphones do if their output impedance is lower and more constant across the frequency range. And preamps that have lower input impedance, and/or input impedance that varies significantly across the audio range, interact with (and sound quality is affected by that interaction) far more than other preamps do if their input impedance is higher and more constant. That can be understood very easily from Ohm's Law: Differing amounts of the signal voltage are "dropped" in the preamp's input impedance at different frequencies, as a kind of voltage divider effect. When these interactions occur, the signal effectively has frequency-selective filtering applied to it before it gets into the preamp circuitry per se.

The problems occur much more with dynamic microphones (including ribbons, which are a kind of dynamic microphone) than with condenser microphones, provided that the input impedance of the preamp is reasonably high and constant (not like the old, old days of 600 Ohm output AND input impedance for tube/transformer studio equipment). The idea of the recording engineer as as chef, for whom the knowledge of which-preamps-go-with-which-microphones was like the skill of using seasonings, got its start before the solid-state era when condenser microphones were extremely expensive and hard to obtain, and ribbon and other dynamic microphones were almost universally used, even in high-ticket professional applications, with preamps that often still had 600 Ohm input impedance (a standard left over from the 1920s, which still had some force 50 years later when I started recording professionally).

Some calculable / measurable "interface losses" always occur, so this is a question of degree. Modern condenser microphones have nearly constant, low (often well below 100 Ohms) output impedance across the audio spectrum, so they aren't nearly as vulnerable to sound-coloring interactions with preamps. And preamps don't need to have input transformers with high turns ratios any more, which create "iffy" loading situations especially at high frequencies.

Thus by choosing your equipment with minimal attention and care, you can sidestep this whole forest of issues. And this is looking only at one aspect of the problem; distortion is another; preamps designed to have a particular sound coloration for marketing purposes are yet another. Again, all these problems are truly optional at this point, and most modern engineers long ago took the Nancy Reagan option ("just say 'no'") because we have better things to do with our limited time and mindspace. To me and a lot of other engineers, if a preamp has an identifiable "sound" of its own (and especially if it might or might not, depending on which mikes I might use it with), I'd prefer some other preamp that doesn't involve me in such unnecessary complications.

--best regards

noahbickart:
I'd also add that "flavor" is very easily added in post via AU/VST plugins.

You want a slightly different EQ profile? use an EQ plugin.

Want Tube/Transformer coloration? Use a saturation plugin.

I think its a total waste of time, these days, to lug lots of equipment into a venue for subtle colorations of sound.

Use an all in one recorder with good preamps and ad conversion and tailor to taste in post.

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