well, i received these yesterday, SN 134&135, always fun to be on the bleeding edge! they're only a few mm's longer than the end of a KC5 active cable.
http://flickr.com/photos/10466474@N04/2311424533/(BTW, somebody wanted a picture of my 'universal ortf bar', there it is.
I was playing around with them a bit, i would describe them as a typical '3-wire' mic. Basically if you can give them 4-9V on the third wire, pure gold comes out of the other ones.
I built a simple (and I mean SIMPLE - one cap, one resistor) powering circuit kindly given to me by bernhard vollmer, and hooked the unbalanced outs from the mics to my V3 (grounding pin 1 and 3 on the V3, of course).
I close mic'd a monitor and recorded at two different volumes:
-monitor playing at a whisper with maximum gain on V3
-monitor playing at typical concert volume, V3 gain at the usual 35 dB
sounded great in both cases, in the louder test, the noise floor of the mic was down in the -70's as expected. The CMRs allow for the full SPL of the capsules (132 dB for an MK4). in the lower volume test, i could hear the self noise of the mic, but i also could clearly hear my voice whispering across the room.
When i get the time, i will be doing a controlled comp vs a CMC6. Schoeps claims the CMR has the same sound and specs (I suppose i could believe that with advances in miniaturization of components in the 30+ years since the CMC6 has been around.), we will see.
The fact that it works at all with my V3 and will still allow me to run a full on open rig with (hopefully) no compromises is a huge breakthrough in my book. Esp since it will make for a killer stealth rig when needed, using the same equipment as people are currently running with the at953s and dpa4061s, except for the bigger mics
this battery circuit literally sips power, 1mA per mic is nothing. i am thinking about switching from a 9V to the tiny 6V silver oxides the CMBI's use.
note that there are two different types of CMR, i got the version with the decoupling capacitor on the signal wire to protect the mics from inputs with 'plug in power', to allow for more preamp options.
i'm working with our favorite north-of-the-border preamp guru to come up with some fun stuff. Trying to get him to expand his talents into the miniature A>D world
FWIW, my 'all in one' miniature box of choice, Len's mic2496 didnt really work (yet?). i currently have it setup with voltage on the signal lines for my 2-wire DPA's, and was hoping the presence of the decoupling caps in the mics would eliminate the need for me to reconfigure it. I am gonna try to jumper it to eliminate any mic powering, and then pull power off of the same or a dedicated 9V with the mini-circuit bernhard gave me
stay tuned!