Sorry to bump an old thread.
Referring to the waveforms shown in the first post, some people attributed it to a dying battery and others to soft clipping. My question is, can a dying battery cause the soft clipping? For example, will a certain mic not clip at all at a given spl when given the right amount of power, but soft clip at the same spl when underpowered (e.g., from a dying battery)? Or can the waveforms shown above always be attributed to soft clipping caused by the spl exceeding what the mic can handle?
In the case of a battery box the voltage would have to be pretty low like 3 volts and I have never seen a 9v go that low
The 933 will overload one of two ways electronically or physically Electronically is a matter of overloading the fet of the mic capsule or the input of the recorder. Both can look the same.... The other physical distortion comes from when the diaphragm hits the backplate that tends to be rather harsh looking. You can also starve the fet of voltage this can have one of two effects lowering amplitude and distortion on the other end of the capsule where its connected. Or distortion in extreme cases by reducing headroom due to the lack of voltage. Based on the waveform I would say this was not a lack of voltage because the whole thing would be distorted or more then a few parts provided that the SPL was constant. I would say its possible this could have been backplate distortion on a transient low end spike. But these are all just guesses.