Topic: What's wrong with my new SP gear?? (sample included)

[bugg100]

Thanks for input.
I did use line-in and battery is fully charged.

Is this a rechargeable 9 volt?

 New?

When I had a 9100 pre it would distort only the bass tone when the voltage got below say 7.75 volts, resulting in the type of distorted audio your sample shows....   Got a voltmeter, or barring that a fresh NON-rechargeable 9 volt...

By the way. safetyclip on the rockboxed iriver is good, it never pushes back up after it lowers gain , only lowering gain if you get within 1-3 dB of 0dB. Never to pump back up which is really on of the problems with AGC circuits previously implemented...  This statement ONLY aplies to Safetyclip via Rockbox firmware though!

[Church-Audio]

Here is the deal.. Running mics like the 800 Series with NO mods what so ever and running it two wire will result in distortion even with a battery box throwing more voltage at the mic will never solve the issue. There are people that think a battery box eliminates distortion it does not.. at least not by it self. You need my mod or to run the mics three wire. ANYONE running these mics two wire even with a battery box will at some point in time get a distorted recording under high SPL conditions. ALL of the specs for the AT 800 series are basted on three wire connections not two wire so that's where the problem lies. There are also some battery boxes being made with coin sells these should be avoided like the plague because coin sells fail all the time and they are unreliable. 9 volt battery boxes using a 9 volt battery will be 1000x more reliable than coin cells. And again some people think 12 volts is better than 9 if the mics are not modified and running 2 wire you can put 16 volts into the mics and they will still overload........

[livingdna]

Did use a non-rechargeable battery, but tested it before and after the recording, showing that it was fully charged. Didn't really seem like 3 hours of recording used any of the battery - would that be abnormal? How much recording time would a 9 volt normally last?

Is this a rechargeable 9 volt?

 New?

When I had a 9100 pre it would distort only the bass tone when the voltage got below say 7.75 volts, resulting in the type of distorted audio your sample shows....   Got a voltmeter, or barring that a fresh NON-rechargeable 9 volt...

By the way. safetyclip on the rockboxed iriver is good, it never pushes back up after it lowers gain , only lowering gain if you get within 1-3 dB of 0dB. Never to pump back up which is really on of the problems with AGC circuits previously implemented...  This statement ONLY aplies to Safetyclip via Rockbox firmware though!

[livingdna]

Summer concerts are coming up and I need to make my mics work again

There have been lots of awesome advise in this thread. Currently I am most keen on just having SP installing the low sens mod but am unsure if this will limit me too much - i.e. will the low sens mod make me unable to record the more quiet gigs? I understand that the noise floor will go up when using the low sens mod, but am unsure how distinct this will be. Anyone has experience?

Alternatives would be purchasing CA14 mics (if available? they are not on website), but I understand that these less stealthy than the SP-CMC8 mics. How much bigger are the CA14 mics?

CA preamp also sound like a good alternative, except for the fact that the unit is rather bulky compared to the SP bat.box.

Finally someone mentioned a cheap 3-wire bat.box running modded mics. How would this perform compared to using the CA preamp and how small would such a 3-wire bat.box be?

I should mention that I need a rig that would allow me to record very loud bands (but occasionally also acoustic gigs). Should I be looking at alternatives with phantom power? Stealth-ability is also a big issuse to me.

[Humbug]

Finally someone mentioned a cheap 3-wire bat.box running modded mics. How would this perform compared to using the CA preamp and how small would such a 3-wire bat.box be?

It's a bit smaller that a CA-9100 pre-amp. Works reliably, and battery life is good. Unfortunately the person that built this for me about 5 years ago found it a bit of a hassle, so only made a couple. I use this for anything from unamplified acoustic right up to metal gigs.

Does anyone make an equivalent? To be honest the CA-9100 does a good job, I just prefer using the 3-wire battery box.

[fandelive]

I'd go for the 4.7k mod + preamp (I use this setup myself). One of the reason any would use a preamp is to add gain without adding noise, right ?

SP-CMC-8 are pretty good quality mics. I don't think you'll get that much additional noise when cranking up the preamp volume.
Just make sure you set your recorder volume at unity gain, then adjust your levels with the preamp knot.

Acoustic shows are more intimate; find a good spot close enough to the source.
You also might want to try modded mics > mic-in for quiet stuff.

Good luck !