Gear / Technical Help > Ask The Tapers
1990s taper finally upgrading gear - a few questions about mics, power, stealth
heathen:
--- Quote from: Scooter123 on August 09, 2021, 12:35:11 PM ---While you may be able to pull decent tapes with other microphones, the odds of pulling a good tape in a bad location is better with Schoeps or Neumanns.
--- End quote ---
Gotta' disagree with you there. Location is everything, and anyone thinking they can make up for suboptimal location simply by purchasing a certain brand of microphone is setting themselves up for disappointment.
OhioHead:
OP - if you don’t go the active route, Old in the Way has the new Schoeps CCM-1 (mini) mic body and we taped LOS @ Woodlands his recording is on Archive (not a great room to tape in, sounds good) and new mic body is tiny.
Good luck and welcome back!
daspyknows:
--- Quote from: heathen on August 09, 2021, 03:36:53 PM ---
--- Quote from: Scooter123 on August 09, 2021, 12:35:11 PM ---While you may be able to pull decent tapes with other microphones, the odds of pulling a good tape in a bad location is better with Schoeps or Neumanns.
--- End quote ---
Gotta' disagree with you there. Location is everything, and anyone thinking they can make up for suboptimal location simply by purchasing a certain brand of microphone is setting themselves up for disappointment.
--- End quote ---
I think the point he is making is in a bad location he will be happier with the Schoeps or Neumanns than with other types. A suboptimal location is just that. The results will be worse that a prime location regardless of mics used.
H₂O:
I'd go Schoeps mk22/4/41 > CMC 1 L or CMC 1 K - Gives you the modularity of the CMC series with almost the size of the CCM (a mm or 2 longer) - plenty of people here use Schoeps Stealth and alot prefer the 4v or 41v (vertical capsule alignment) in these situations as well as the mics can conform better to the shape of the head (as you direction of the mic is side addressed). So you could go mk4v > CMC 1 K and be pretty low profile.
I prefer the sound the 4 to the 4v but that is me.
Schoeps just came out with the CMC 1 so you should be good to go for some time.
There are many options for pre's/AD's and all in one's that the schoeps CMC's could plug right into. For example:
https://www.sonosax.ch/product/sx-m2d2/
If you went with CMC 1-L (Lemo) - you could get custom Lemo > mini 3pin XLR's cables made to make that setup small
MK4v > CMC 1-L > M2D2 > iPhone (you would want a dedicated phone that would run in airplane mode IMO - to avoid any issues) - battery life may be an issue as the M2D2 claims 4.5 hours on a single charge but don't know real world timings
The newer DPA's are modular as well but they do not have side addresses caps.
Gutbucket:
Good morning Mr Van Winkle,
Condensing and summing up a bit on the contributions , with a general overview of options for you.. (much posting here since I started this response a few hours ago, so there is overlap with the above)
Miniature options-
If omnis work for you, DPA 4060 or 4061 is a good choice, mounted on glasses as you are familiar, or placed on either side of your head in a hat. Choose 4060 to get lowest self-noise (best accommodating nature recording and very quiet classical/folk/jazz music) or lower sensitivity 4061 to gain additional headroom for particularly loud music. You will need a battery box or preamp which provides between 5V-9V to power them correctly, placed ahead of your R-05 should otherwise work nicely. If you want to consider recording to iphone or other Apple devices, DPA now makes a very compact preamp/ADC that connects directly to iphone used as recorder called the d:vice. The d:vice is able to power DPA miniature microphones directly from the phone. There is no option more stealth-able than a pair of miniature DPA 4060 or 4061 > DPA d:vice > iOS device. Android unfortunately not currently supported.
4060 work well for nature recording except for super quiet background stuff, and are essentially waterproof.
There are miniature directional mics available, but if you want high-quality directional mics, you will probably be best served with the following modular options-
1) DPA's full line of higher-end (non-miniauture) modular capsule mics can also be used with the d:vice > iOS device, via a special cable with miniature amplifier. There is no other equivalent modular option as small and compact, but it does require recording to an iOS device rather than a dedicated recorder (Actually this might also work for DPA directional caps into a regular recorder without the d:vice by using the same special cable/amplifier into a preamp providing low voltage 5V-9V powering, but I've not heard of anyone trying this yet).
2) Schoeps, Microtech Gefell, Neumann, or AKG sdc capsules powered via a third party device that replaces the microphone amplifier body - Requires active cable or custom cable connection that fits the capsules and Schoepsnbox's Nbox, or Naiant PFA or Tinybox. This is the traditional route to compact directional mic stealth rigs at Taper Section, which many here have experience with.
3) Schoeps CCM has effectively been superseded by recent developments that end up being about the same size - both Schoeps's and DPA's primary lines of interchangeable-capsule microphones are now available with very compact phantom powered amplifiers about the size of an XLR plug. Current Sennheiser is not modular but much more compact than previous Senn SDCs. If using a recorder that does not provide phantom power to the microphones (such as your R05), you'll need to power the mics using a phantom power box or preamp that provides phantom ahead of the recorder.
Sonosax M2D2 is a high quality preamp /ADC that provides both phantom power and low voltage and can feed analog input recorders or digital USB host device such as a phone. In that way it is similar to d:vice but is larger and more fully featured. Compact and top quality but not miniature.
Edit- as H2O mentions, if you want compact modular sdc side-address, that points to Schoeps
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