Topic: Crown SASS-P MK II

[gatorglenn]

Hi,

I am looking for feedback on this microphone. I am considering trying one to record middle school and high school concert bands. If anyone has experience using one please let me know if you liked it or not. Also if you know any places to get one used for a decent price please let me know also. I do know that a version without the box and accessories is available new for considerably less than the original model. That model is the Crown SASS HC, I think.

Thanks,
Glenn

[leddy]

Bought mine on Ebay for about $350.  It's a SASS-P MKII.   

[gatorglenn]

Bought mine on Ebay for about $350.  It's a SASS-P MKII.

Great price. How do you like it?

Thanks,
Glenn

[Yane]

Used one for several years before it was stolen: loved it for precisely your application. Get it 10-15 feet high 5-10 feet behind the conductor and you're good to go -- for ease and repeatability of setup it's hard to beat. The ability to run it on two internal 9 volt batteries is nice if you don't have phantom power. I don't see the accessory kit as very useful -- it's not so delicate that a carrying case is particularly necessary.  I had the windscreen (worked great, btw) with mine, but then again I had a refurbished unit direct from Crown -- not sure if the HC variant includes one. The only downside is that it's not terribly directional: a bad room will sound BAD -- get it close to minimize room sound.

[leddy]

Bought mine on Ebay for about $350.  It's a SASS-P MKII.

Great price. How do you like it?

Thanks,
Glenn

I like it for the most part.  The stereo image is nice.  You'll need to spend some time getting the hang of where to put it for best results (though the same can be said for any mic).  I guess the difference is that other pairs of mics give you the ability to tweak their angle or spacing.  The SASS is fixed, so you will have to move it around the room until it's right.  I have not really used mine since I bought a Tetramic (a four-capsule Soundfield-type mic), but I'm hanging on to it for some situations.

If you are not too close or too far from the source, it can be great.  My church has one permanently installed hanging from the ceiling. 

[gatorglenn]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies. I wish that I could find a used one for a decent price as I would like to try one but I don't think I can buy a new one without first knowing that I will really like it. But I am still searching around. The HC model if it can be found is quite cheaper and I can live without the case and other accessories so I am looking into that model the most.

Thanks,
Glenn

[stober]

Great stereo mic. It's an omni so it's not ideal for taping in the back of a room with a crowd. I bought one new in 1999 for like 350.00 and sold it here about three years ago for 150.00.I didn't get the case and extra accessories. If I remember correctly the mic with the padded case and accessories was close to 1,000. But if you bought just the mic and windscreen it was 350.00.  They don't ever pop up here for sale...usually every once in a while you find one on ebay. I think it would be great to record middle school and high school concert bands with that mic. That would probably be a great application for that mic.

[colors]

I have one and use it all the time.  Mine is the older SASS-P (pre MKII) and I bring it to pretty much every concert because my cables, R44 and batteries fit nicely in the case with the Crown.  I have pulled some nice recordings using just the Crown but have also paired it with SBD or spaced omnis. 
Here's a sample from a few weeks ago, a free improvising trio.  I put the Crown on the very front of the stage floor, everyone is going acoustic, no EQ. 
http://www.alanmunshower.com/dump/sass.mp3

[leddy]

Sounds like the polarity was flipped on one of the channels.

I have one and use it all the time.  Mine is the older SASS-P (pre MKII) and I bring it to pretty much every concert because my cables, R44 and batteries fit nicely in the case with the Crown.  I have pulled some nice recordings using just the Crown but have also paired it with SBD or spaced omnis. 
Here's a sample from a few weeks ago, a free improvising trio.  I put the Crown on the very front of the stage floor, everyone is going acoustic, no EQ. 
http://www.alanmunshower.com/dump/sass.mp3

[colors]

how could that happen on a fixed stereo mic going into the r-44?

[leddy]

how could that happen on a fixed stereo mic going into the r-44?

Check your gear and see.  Could be a cable, or maybe the mic or R44 was mis-wired.  Maybe you accidentally did it in post production.  Don't know.  But I heard it the second your file played. 

Does it sound ok to you like it is?  Did you try flipping the phase of one of the channels to compare?  Are you certain your monitors are not out of phase with each other?

[leddy]

I took the liberty of downloading and inverting the phase on one of the channels.  Here it is.

I had to shorten it to get below 512mb.  I converted to Wav and back to MP3 but at too high a resolution.  Sorry.

[colors]

yeah my original sounded strange in that in would mess with my balance and ears a bit, so could tell something was off.  Still completed baffled what it could have been.  I am going to try and replicate the setup tongith to see if I get the same problem.

[colors]

alright here's another recent pull that I suspect has the same issue.  please take a listen, I've uploaded it as wav this time.
http://www.alanmunshower.com/dump/newsass.wav

I am curious if this Polarity issue can be fixed in Audacity, and of course I would LOVE to find out how this is happening.

[leddy]

I still hear it.  The dead giveaway is that there is more low-end when you flip the phase on one channel.

I hear one channel way louder than the other too.

God, I wish I had more good music like that to record around me. 

[leddy]

I am curious if this Polarity issue can be fixed in Audacity, and of course I would LOVE to find out how this is happening.

I don't know Audacity, but I'd be shocked if you could not fix it there.  It's a pretty basic function.

[colors]

Thanks, that actually a band of mine, which turned into a jam session.  Is the loudness you percieve due to the instruments positioning?  I have notched input level on my edirol so it should be even, but the sax and trumpet and are pretty close to the mic (~3 ft) so could that be the volume difference? I recorded this with another set of mics, but this sample is just the crown. 

Well it seems there must be a problem with the mic then...would I be wrong to assume so?

[leddy]

Not sure the best way to test.  I guess I would split a mono test tone among the channels of R44 and see if any are inverted relative to the others.  If they were all ok, then I'd suspect the mic.  It would be easy to fix. 

[colors]

I'm going to take it out tonight with a different pre and recorder for some out-jazz.  I'll have samples tomorrow.

[SmokinJoe]

I am curious if this Polarity issue can be fixed in Audacity, and of course I would LOVE to find out how this is happening.

To fix in audacity is really easy. A friend of mine had mics wired out of phase and he did this to every recording in about 2 seconds.  Eventually we fixed his wiring.
- open file in audacity
- on Left side of the wave form, by the filename, is a little drop down triangle.... "Split Stereo Track"
- highlight the left (upper) side alone, since we don't know "which side" is backwards, it doesn't really matter, just pick one and flip it.
- Select menu option "Effect" then "Invert"... wait a second... done.
- In the same drop down on the left "Make Stereo Track".
- That's it... you are done.

[Shadow_7]

One caveat, you have to have both tracks selected to make stereo track after all that.  Click one, hold the shift down and click the other.  Or goto Edit -> Select -> All

I have Avenson STO-2's which are very similar to the sass.  I've thought about upgrading to the Sass for a better low end a couple of times.  But I like being able to adjust the aim of each mic.  I've seen the sass mounted to a ceiling in several places.  One of the local band rooms has it permanently mounted to the ceiling.  It's a bit BIG IMO, but a nice mic.

The inversion is evident in the waverform on that wav file.  You can literally see it's mirror image like attributes.  Could be the mic, could be the cable, could be the recorder. 

[Charlie Miller]

My friend Bob Cogswell has been using the Crown PZM mics for over 10 years and loves them. I've done some 4 mic mixes with him and they sound great.

[taperboy]

I have had and used almost continuously the SASS PZM since 1990. The first use was in taping the Grateful Dead in a middle or rear
of a room situation. I offset the mic's weakness in that situation with a pair of tube mics, initially a borrowed set of AKG 1000s which
were combined with the Crown through an inexpensive Radio Shack passive mixer. I eventually moved away from that style of recording as I moved into smaller rooms and learned more about mic placement. I now place the Crown on the stage of any venue
I'm recording in and augment it with eith a stereo sbd or a multi-track recording using a split snake for the stage inputs coupled with
the stereo signal from the Crwon. I value the mic's stereo imaging very highly, but I am occasionally pleasantly reminded that the mic
can stand alone and deliver surprising fidelity. In a recent case, while recording a band in a small room (150 max), the sbd was not
sent during the first set and I had only the stage. For the second set, the sbd was sent and when I compared the two sets later,
expecting to be disappointed with the lack of vocals and instrument support from the sbd in the 1st set, I felt that the resulting 2-track was nearly as good as the full 2nd set 4-track. It was easily good enough to upload to LMA and I thanked Crown again for
building such a good mic.

[Gutbucket]

..Here's a sample from a few weeks ago, a free improvising trio.  I put the Crown on the very front of the stage floor, everyone is going acoustic, no EQ. 
http://www.alanmunshower.com/dump/sass.mp3

Love that improv!  Can you post more of it?  
Great application for this mic, I dig the sound and imaging. [edit- after correcting polarity and balance]

Agreed on the channel inversion and level imbalance.  As a simple way of checking, I insert a simple M/S plugin tool in my software player- typically there should be more bass apparent in the solo'd mid channel (the sum) vs. the solo'd side channel (the difference).  In this case the solo'd side channel (L-R) had more apparent bass, implying that one channel had inverted polarity. 

[Charlie Miller]

I have had and used almost continuously the SASS PZM since 1990. The first use was in taping the Grateful Dead in a middle or rear
of a room situation. I offset the mic's weakness in that situation with a pair of tube mics, initially a borrowed set of AKG 1000s which
were combined with the Crown through an inexpensive Radio Shack passive mixer. I eventually moved away from that style of recording as I moved into smaller rooms and learned more about mic placement. I now place the Crown on the stage of any venue
I'm recording in and augment it with eith a stereo sbd or a multi-track recording using a split snake for the stage inputs coupled with
the stereo signal from the Crwon. I value the mic's stereo imaging very highly, but I am occasionally pleasantly reminded that the mic
can stand alone and deliver surprising fidelity. In a recent case, while recording a band in a small room (150 max), the sbd was not
sent during the first set and I had only the stage. For the second set, the sbd was sent and when I compared the two sets later,
expecting to be disappointed with the lack of vocals and instrument support from the sbd in the 1st set, I felt that the resulting 2-track was nearly as good as the full 2nd set 4-track. It was easily good enough to upload to LMA and I thanked Crown again for
building such a good mic.

Here's one of the tapes you and I made many many years ago:

http://www.archive.org/details/zero2000-11-11

[illconditioned]

I have one and use it all the time.  Mine is the older SASS-P (pre MKII) and I bring it to pretty much every concert because my cables, R44 and batteries fit nicely in the case with the Crown.  I have pulled some nice recordings using just the Crown but have also paired it with SBD or spaced omnis. 
Here's a sample from a few weeks ago, a free improvising trio.  I put the Crown on the very front of the stage floor, everyone is going acoustic, no EQ. 
http://www.alanmunshower.com/dump/sass.mp3

That sounds great!  Natural and open omni sound, great image due to the SASS shape.   Damn, would love to get one of these and put some even better omni mics in it!

  Richard

[Gutbucket]

Damn, would love to get one of these and put some even better omni mics in it!

Crown sold (sells?) a verson for use with other mics.  Basically its the same SASS baffle with two holes in it to flushmount standard omnis (with the mic bodies protruding to the rear) where the PZM's would be.

Never seen one in person, but I've stumbled across photos on-line of one with DPA 4006s.

[colors]

Thanks for all the great comments guys!  This thread has been very informative and complimentary.  Double awesome!

Anyways here is a sample from last night with the SASS.  What an unbelievable 2 sets of improvised music....check this sample

http://www.alanmunshower.com/dump/sassmay11.wav