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Author Topic: Battery powered microphone preamps with phantom power?  (Read 18321 times)

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Offline Shadow_7

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Re: Battery powered microphone preamps with phantom power?
« Reply #45 on: March 12, 2010, 12:33:16 PM »
In case anyone is interested, some samples of Korg versus MM1 preamps.  CD quality WAV files or better.  Very short clips (< 15 seconds each) of my bad trombone playing.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ju6ikg

It looks like I gain a lower noise floor and maybe some battery life.  The rest of it is probably more perception than science.  The noise floor part is evident even on my laptops onboard soundcard through headphones.  The difference should be more substantial once I get less noisy mics.

Offline Shadow_7

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Re: Battery powered microphone preamps with phantom power?
« Reply #46 on: March 13, 2010, 08:29:08 AM »
Limiter works.  The input is still a little hot before it does.  With the Korg gain knob about 10am, the limiter kicks in between 0db and +3dB, closer to 0dB on the Korg MR-1000.  Still usable for my sources in combination with the Korg MR-1000 to fine tune it.  It's just a little disheartening that the first click goes from 0dB to 18dB.  Only 10 clicks and progressively smaller jumps the closer you get to 66dB.  I guess that works, but most of my needs are between 0dB and 28dB for my current mics.  Giving me only 3 unique clicks to choose from.

Offline Shadow_7

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Re: Battery powered microphone preamps with phantom power?
« Reply #47 on: March 15, 2010, 12:29:36 PM »
I tried the new preamps (MM-1) on a familiar source.  Finally a result I'm happy with.  Not quite the low end I could have (need better mics), but my low end bump has been effectively cut in half.  Which cuts the unruly peaks down a lot too.  Lower noise floor is awesome.  And some of the low end bump is due to the top heavy sound of the source. 

I recorded three 20-30 minute sets on Saturday.  With some between set listening, and the battery icon on the korg was still showing full status afterwards.  Nice.  One quirk on one of the preamps.  Even though the batteries were in and closed and in the right way, for some reason it didn't register as being powered.  Took the batteries out and put them back the same way and it registered the second time.  Fortunately I opted to record a section of the rehearsal to get a feel for the new levels, before the show.  Or I might not have caught that until it was show time.  It's not like there's a lot of wiggle room in there so I'm not sure why they didn't seat right the first time.

Anyway, nice little preamps.

Offline Shadow_7

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Re: Battery powered microphone preamps with phantom power?
« Reply #48 on: April 11, 2010, 12:25:34 PM »
An update of sorts.  I recorded about four hours of content yesterday on one set of batteries.  A number of lectures at Texas Linuxfest.  I ran the MM-1 + MR-1000 combo on the first 7 lectures.  At the end of which, the MR-1000 battery icon had just jumped to show half power and the MM-1s LED still looked green (hard to tell since I'm red/green deficient).  Not wanting to risk it being too close to the 4 hour spec of the MM-1 with 48V phantom enabled, I reconfigured with fresh batteries in the MR-1000 and dropping the MM-1's off the rig since I was short 4x AAs to make it happen.  Less than an hour into recording on just the korg, the battery icon jumped to the same half icon.  So it looks like I might have been able to record the entire thing on one set of batteries with the MM-1's (but I didn't want to risk it with 45 minute afternoon lectures).  Where 2.5 hours on freshly charged NiMH AAs is pushing it for the MR-1000 by itself.  It could be that recording at 24/48 is less of a draw than 5.6 DSD.  But I'm quite happy as I was hoping to crest 3 hours, and it looks like I can crest 4 hours with room to spare.  Per set of batteries (2400mAh NiMH in the Korg, 2100mAh NiMH in the MM-1's).

I had intended to bring regular AAs, but forgot so I wasn't able to keep using the MM-1's.  Well I could have, but didn't want to risk it(virgin territory).  Plus I wanted to compare the two configurations side by side in a similar context.  Not much different, it does look like the dynamic range is a bit different.  I'm not sure in favor of which, but loud peaks on the Korg only are not quite as unruly as they are on the combo, but the limiter sucks so you have to play it safe.  I was kind of surpised the relatively high gain on the Avenson STO-2's didn't seem to worsen the relatively high noise floor associated with said mics.  I probably should have run the gain even hotter, I was hard limiting -12dB on applause, it would have been nice to see that closer to -5dB.  The low samplerate plus high amp (12dB) in post left a waveform with a DC offset that seemed to drift more than expected.  Than might have been seen had I recorded in DSD and converted.  Not of much consequence for the spoken word in a noisy hall with a target 32kbps MP3 output.  But still not very pretty to look at.

 

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