Topic: Internal mic shootout - M10, H2N, DR-22WL

[daspyknows]

my $.02.  Just but mics and plug them in.  This sounds like putting $2k rims on a cheap old car. 

[Ozpeter]

Wasn't there a recent M10 teardown thread here?

Apart from any other consideration, cardioid mics would require a very different type of housing so you'd have to be ready to modify the case appropriately.  Probably not worth the effort unless you are seriously into that kind of thing.

[2manyrocks]

The whole idea reminds me of the bad kid next door in Toy Story that took his toys apart, but here's one thread.  http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=171638.0

[Chrisedge]

Great test and just goes to show in an IDEAL situation, the internals can certainly sound nice. I did notice a difference between the Sony and the other two. Both the Tascam and the Zoom sounded better.

[Gutbucket]

On modifying internal mics..

I was never a much of a fan of the R-09's internal omnis, but placing a simple wedge-shaped cardboard baffle on the recorder effectively turned it into a miniature J-disk setup and greatly improved the resulting stereo imaging.  I never actually recorded any music with it that way, but I kept the folding cardboard baffle with an R-09 shaped cutout in my recording bag for as long as I was using the R-09, just in case I ever needed to use it along on a table in a pinch.  Didn't improve the quality of the not so great capsules, but provided vastly improved imaging.

Same should work for the internal omnis (or upgraded internal omnis) on the M10 or any pocket recorder using omni caps.  Just arrange the baffle so that the openings to the omni capsules are as close as possible to the surface of the cardboard on each side.  The folding wedge format helps to get the caps as close as possible to the corner intersection of the baffle and recorder housing as you can adjust the wedge angle to suit.  As I recall the M10 has one small hole for each mic, so arrange the baffle so that the hole is right in the corner created by of the cardboard against the recorder housing, without obscuring the hole.  That way you'll eliminate reflections off the hard-surfaced baffle, while harnessing some boundary effect providing increased clarity in the upper frequency range (down to a frequency corresponding to the size of the baffle), which should help counter "internal omni muddiness" somewhat.  I suppose it's really more of a miniature PZM Wedge setup than a J-disk.

Here's my old thread on baffles for R-09 built-in mics from 2006- http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=70134.msg939775#msg939775
A few photos from that thread-







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You may recall Chris Church's "Micsketeers"mod for the original Edirol R-09 offered a few years later in '08, in which he removed the internal omnis and replaced them with a pair of his cardioids.   Here's the original thread- http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=98290.msg1309708#msg1309708
And a few photos from it-





The recorder housing needed to be modified to provide the appropriate angle for the attached cardioid capsules, and the rear vents need to be keep unobscured.