Topic: omni comparison/ mic upgrade

[weroflu]

compared little blondies, dpa 4060, oscartech 802 flat omni, and the sennheiser ke4 capsule homebrews > littlebox > sony m10

the blondies were the noisiest.  nice on transients but for some reason they seem to focus the transients only and i didn't get enough other lower frequencies or instrument body.

oscars noise is about the same as the blondies.i  really like the sound if i tune out the noise.
(quick question, i have been rms normalizing in audacity, this won't add noise, right?)

ke4 capsule mics are really nice,  less noisy than oscars, but noise is noticeable. i really like the sound of these too.

4060, no surprise they are bright, but they make things more hifi sounding.

so here area  few questions...

will the dpa mma6000 preamp be any improvement over the littlebox? i'm inclined to think not. i'm guessing the mma6000 would be similar in sound to littlebox. also is the m10 mic pre quieter than the littlebox?

to get a similar sound as the oscars or the ke4 (mm-hlso type mic) with less noise, what would i be looking at? mk series schoeps? larger diaphragm dpa?  higher end /larger diaphragm sennheisers?

has anyone experience with the 4099 mics for instrument micing? these are supercardioid and i'm a bit reluctant to deal with proximity effect. i'm not sure if i understood their freq response properly... are they designed to use proximity effect to be flat when inside and instrument and then roll off when farther than 8 inches from source?

sidenote: i still don't like digital recording.  listened to some oud recordings from 1964 of hamza el din and they were just perfectly sublime.  visions of stellavox sp8 somewhere in the next year or two.

[weroflu]

thanks

i'm sure i will like the b3's since i like all the clips i've heard here and on lma. i think it would be sort of a lateral move though. i have the mellower sounds covered with the ke4 and oscars (and both can go straight into the m10-- huge plus) and bright is covered with the dpa. some day i will probably get a pair since they are good bargain.

i figure at this point it's only worth it to go for a major upgrade, otherwise i'm mostly happy with what i have now.

[adrianf74]

thanks

i'm sure i will like the b3's since i like all the clips i've heard here and on lma. i think it would be sort of a lateral move though. i have the mellower sounds covered with the ke4 and oscars (and both can go straight into the m10-- huge plus) and bright is covered with the dpa. some day i will probably get a pair since they are good bargain.

i figure at this point it's only worth it to go for a major upgrade, otherwise i'm mostly happy with what i have now.

Consider my move (and the move of a select few in these parts) who moves from DPA 406x to a Countryman B3.   

I actually consider _ANY_ mic movement a step in the right direction as long as it's an improvement (to my ears).    I'd prefer *NOT* to have bright sounds in my capture and then bump up the same frequencies in post if it's needed.  Of all 30 or so shows I did with the 4061's, every single one of them saw me remove some frequences in the boosted area. 

[weroflu]

i'm going to mess around with digital eq in audacity today.

i did a ton of listening the past few days and sort of reversed a few opinions i had. the 4060's are bright, but they don't hurt like the 184's did. they handle transients extremely well, so as long as they don't distort i'm happy. the blondies sounded a lot better on second listening than originally, they are really great, full sounding, and they handle transients very well.

maybe someone can share some eq tips with me, i'm pretty green with digital eq-ing. if anyone has audacity i'd love to have a 4060 eq curve file.

one positive for the 4060 also is that when we used to go to tape we'd add some high end intentionally and then back it off on mix to reduce noice. i think this could work as a de-facto noise reduction for the 4060, not that they are noticeably noisy to me yet.

audacity noise reduction is surprisingly artifact free. i did about 12db on the blondies and was very surprised how good that worked out.

the littlebox is light years ahead of the m10. i will not be using the m10 pres unless there is some dire need.

i am hard pressed to come up with a reason to upgrade the littlebox right now. i can see a portico or forssell in my crystal ball but maybe not just yet.

debating right now whether to spring for mk2's and bodies. i'm sure i'll like the b3's but probably not as much as schoeps.

no one ever got back to me on the mma6000 question, how it rates with littlebox and other contenders.

[paulbaptiste]

I have no direct comparison between the littlebox/MMA6000 (as i didn't own DPAs when i had my littlebox) with the DPA's but owned and ran them with a slew of other pre's and by law of deduction i prefered the DPA preamp over the rest.  I've ran 4061's thru a church 9100 (fitted with microdots), shure fp24, mixpre, DPA MMA6000, and a busman modded 660.  I owned my littlebox and Mixpre at the same time and enjoyed the sound of the MixPre over the littlebox.  I kept the mixpre and sold the littlebox. 

Last year i ran two rigs with a friend at The Avett Brothers show here in Indy; his rig (which is in the YS) DPA 4061>DPAMMA6000>R09HR  and my rig DPA 4061>MixPre>R09HR... same  mic stand, same spread at 3', my mics about 1' higher than his and he got the better pull that night, more detail, clairty, just more presence than my tape...

I no longer own my 4061's, but if i were to build another dedicated small omni rig, i'd get the DPA preamp over the rest, as it is they belong together, and from my roundabout experience, it definitely sounds that way also. 

[Gutbucket]

has anyone experience with the 4099 mics for instrument micing? these are supercardioid and i'm a bit reluctant to deal with proximity effect. i'm not sure if i understood their freq response properly... are they designed to use proximity effect to be flat when inside and instrument and then roll off when farther than 8 inches from source?

The 4099 are designed for close mic'ing and start to shelve down significantly below ~400Hz by design.  The proximity effect of close mic'ing compensates for that response curve.  WiFi Jeff uses them and says he prefers them to all other miniature directionals, but he also runs 4063's (lower voltage version of the 4061) coincidently with the 4099 on each side and mixes the two to compensate for their reduced bass sensitivity.  If you are not doing something similar you are likely to find the 4099 to sound more thin and bright than you would like I'd guess.  I'd love to give them a try sometime, probably the higher sensitivity hanging choral mic version which is otherwise identical except for sensitivity and mounting.. i forget the model number.

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On the B3s, I hear a harsher resonance up top which is more annoying and harder to deal with than the 4060s, but none of mine are wired with source resistors and have been used mostly without the grids, so I'm still withholding judgment until I add resistors and flat grids.  The 4060s sound perceptually brighter to to my ear overall, but with a smoother, lower-Q emphasis than the B3’s peakier resonance. I'd really wanted to prefer the B3's simply based on the price, but the DPAs are smoother, quieter, far more transparent and natural sounding to my ear and also easier to EQ.. at least so far.  All of that is significant enough to me that I’m sticking with the 4060s at this point.  Others obviously feel differently- ¡Vive la différence!
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MMA6000 is a nice preamp, works well, sounds clean, good battery life and battery monitoring, but I had no qualms moving to using either CA-UGLYs  or Niant PFAs with my 4060s (and B3s) simply because of my practical usage issues.  Because of that I rarely use the MMA6000 at this point.  CA-UGLY had a slightly lower perceptual noise floor when I first compared it informally to the MMA6000. I didn't hear enough difference otherwise to choose of one over the other based on sonics more than practical aspects such as size and ohter things.  FWIW, Moke did the ‘accidental dremel mod’ on his MMA6000 and replaced the HPF switch with a 3.5mm TRS jack which made it easy to use it with non-microdot mics which also operate on the 5V PIP it provides.

Last year i ran two rigs with a friend at The Avett Brothers show here in Indy; his rig (which is in the YS) DPA 4061>DPAMMA6000>R09HR  and my rig DPA 4061>MixPre>R09HR... same  mic stand, same spread at 3', my mics about 1' higher than his and he got the better pull that night, more detail, clairty, just more presence than my tape...

When I first started running 4060>MMA6000>R-09 I did extensive testing with A-B spacing and height from typical FOB locations, making lots of adjustments, listening with phones, taking lots of notes, and then listening later on speakers.  Most of that was done at the Spirit of the Suwannee Amphitheater back in ‘06.  I was amazed how minor adjustments in both A-B width spacing and mic height affected the resulting recordings.  The strong influence of what I figured were minor height changes (probably very PA/venue specific) was particularly unexpected to me, and differences of 6” much less 1’ were quite audible.  I was surprised to find that in those tests, in that particular situation (hedge, hedge) that going higher than about a foot above head height reduced the highs and clarity significantly.  Not saying that was the case in your comp or not, but don’t rule it out.  Those tests were of a clustered point source PA, from about the equilateral triangle apex.  I’d suspect that hanging line array PA’s would have less variation with height, but I haven’t tested that.  Those same test recordings are what lead me to using and suggesting a 3' A-B spacing as a decent starting point for many situations.

[weroflu]

what would be the best  schoeps body option to go with the littlebox. for the time being i'm ruling out cmr because i will be doing quiet recording and i'd like to have the extra s/n. so it's cmc or cmbi.

i think my lb low power is 20v, so not sure if the ccm will like that.

is there a 12v pfa/tpower doodad?

cmc's would be fine just swapping batteries every 3-4 hours, just trying to find a way to get more battery time.

any disadvantage to cmbi?

[Gutbucket]

I'm not up on all the Schoepes variants.  I think that with the appropriate connection cables, they can also be used with either a dedicated tinybox or PFAs from Niant without the mic bodies. 

Mostly came back to add to my post above that my impressions of the 4060 vs B3 are mostly with on-stage jazz, classical, and other minimal PA or all acoustic music, not so much higher amplified PA rock stuff - which may account for some of the difference in opinion.. or not.

[Todd R]

I'm hardly the expert on schoeps, but I thought the CMC6's were only spec'd for 12v and 48v phantom (or maybe 12v, 24v, and 48v).  Whether that is because they won't work at 20v or whether schoeps doesn't want to spec out levels of phantom power they haven't tested, I don't know.

That said, I thought all littleboxes came standard with low power phantom (around 20-22v depending on the exact LB revision) and 48v phantom.  So you should be able to run the schoeps bodies at 48v.  Unless you're concerned about LB battery life, and that's why you want to run at 20v.

You should check with Jon at Naiant about this.  Also, you should check with him on the PFA option.  I thought the PFA could run with as little at 12v phantom (and they are phantom powered, not T-powered I believe).  But I thought the PFA option of running schoeps caps without CMC bodies also lowered their sensitivity much like the CMR option, so you might not want to go down that route.

[SmokinJoe]

what would be the best  schoeps body option to go with the littlebox. for the time being i'm ruling out cmr because i will be doing quiet recording and i'd like to have the extra s/n. so it's cmc or cmbi.

i think my lb low power is 20v, so not sure if the ccm will like that.

is there a 12v pfa/tpower doodad?

cmc's would be fine just swapping batteries every 3-4 hours, just trying to find a way to get more battery time.

any disadvantage to cmbi?

I ran my Littlebox with CMC4's (12T powered).  Yes I was able to run on low power, but before I had it mod'ed for 12T I used the P48-12T adapters in between and ran it on high power.  I was able to run ALL WEEKEND on a 9.6v R/C car battery (2600mah) on low power.  I don't remember how much more it used on high power with adapters, I just remember it was a LOT better than my V3 or Mini-MP, probably 8 hours or more.  Jon designs pres to be power thrifty.  Running the Littlebox with CMC6's should be the same as any other P48 mic.  Yes, I think the CMC6's want 12V -or- 48V, not random values in between.  If you spend thousand$ on Schoeps caps and bodies, it's silly to skimp on batteries.

CMBI's have an unbalanced output, similiar to most small mics which run off plug-in-power.  As such, the run between the mics and the recorder is susceptible to noise, and you probably should avoid long runs (like a 50' snake).

I think it's generally accepted that it's a lot easier to build a good omni (pressure transducer) than it is to build a good directional mic (pressure gradient transducer).  I would think you could find good omnis for less than Schoeps prices.  As small stealth omnis go, I like DSM-6's.  I own a set, but I haven't used them a lot, just for stealth on a couple occasions.  When I run open omnis it's generally Earthworks.  Earthworks are very power thirsty, so if battery life is an issue, steer clear.

If you do a lot of quiet recording where self noise is a big issue, then it's a simple fact that small capsules will be noisier in general than large capsules.  Another thing to remember is most "tapers" are recording in really loud conditions so capsules are desensitized... look at all the different DSM-6 models with various sensitivities.  There is a pretty straightforward relationship between decreasing sensitivity and increasing noise. One thing you should try, just because it's so damn cheap, is a set of Panasonic caps with a homebrew wiring setup.  You wouldn't want the Linkwitz mod, it decreases sensitivity and increases noise, you would want just a simple 2 wire setup.  There are probably quite a few tapes on the archive with AT853's omnis, and Church Audio omnis.  All these are a larger cap than the 4060, and might be quieter, I haven't looked up the specs.