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Gear / Technical Help => Microphones & Setup => Topic started by: newplanet7 on July 25, 2009, 06:45:07 PM
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Wondering if anyone else has had this experience.
When I tape I bump one channel up more than another
and thought it had to be the caps.
I was interested to see how much they differed.
So I set up 1 microphone body #34050 and swapped caps
and reducer rings and recorded in mono. The mic was set up 18" from the stereo.
All configurations of cap, ring and body 34050
had pretty much exact output/sensitivity.
So I decided to switch out another body and repeat. Body #34062.
Tried all the different cap, ring and body 34062 configurations once again
recording in mono. Once again pretty much exact sensitivity of all the caps/ring
configurations.
However body #34062 had less sensitivity/output.
It was different by a few db.
Once I added a little gain while recording it had the same sensitivity as the other mic.
So the caps are pretty much dead on while the bodies aren't.
Weird?
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Time to send it in for a checkup. I had the same problem with a 480 body.
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I have the exact same mics/caps and the same issue. I tested them the exact same way as well.
My caps are about 1/2 dB off and my bodies are about 1.5 dB off. I just put them together so they are closest (~1dB off) and mark one to always be the left with a piece of tape and run the pre with a little bump up on that side. Works for me. I can't tell any difference in sound other than the output.
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Whenever a manufacturer has a series of condenser microphones that is modular--i.e. with various capsules that are interchangeable on the same amplifiers (bodies)--then those amplifiers are normally designed to have very flat frequency response, perhaps with some filtering at the high and/or low frequency end of the response range. Any two properly functioning microphone amplifiers from a series like that shouldn't vary in their frequency response by more than a tiny fraction of a dB, most likely at one or the other of the frequency extremes.
But the gain of two such amplifiers may differ by some greater fraction of a dB, even with the highest-quality brands. For the best brands of studio microphones, the amplifier gain might be consistent to within ±0.5 dB, for example--but that would still allow two such amplifiers to differ by about 1 dB in the statistical worst case.
Still, condenser microphone capsules typically vary in their sensitivity by even greater amounts (thus the main argument for having one's capsules selected as matched pairs). In any given pair of modular microphones of the same type, there will usually be one pairing of capsules with amplifiers that results in a closer match, while the other possible pairing results in a less close match. Since I very often do stereo recording with only two microphones, I find it worthwhile to figure out which pairing gives me the better match between channels.
--best regards
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Well it was a stupid error on my part with this.
I had the switch moved on that body. :-[
I noticed it that night that it was switched a little.
Now all is fine except my embarrassment.
I need to get drunk less perhaps.
//prolly not >:D
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Well it was a stupid error on my part with this.
I had the switch moved on that body. :-[
So you had the 10dB pad switched in on one of the pair. ;D
You won't do that again, I think. ;D
Don't be too embarrassed, we all do something like this at one time or another.