Topic: Is anybody recording with any of Michael Joly's mics or mods?

[fguidry]

I found my MJE-384K caps to be VERY different from the standard NT5 caps. For my purposes, the NT5 caps are a little "harsh", while the MJE-384K's are much more mellow.

Regards, Christine

Have you by any chance done an ABX with the samples provided by Joly?

Please take this in the right way. Simple uncontrolled listening tests are a proven source of bad information. Our ear/brain rig simply can't hold onto audio memory for long enough to switch capsules on mics, we're intensely subject to label bias, and we get our impression from our point of attention, so listening to a bright section vs a warm section will through off our perception severely. This is not a knock on your abilities, this is simply the status of human evolution in regards to audio (and lots of other things).

Fran

[connloyalist]

Have you by any chance done an ABX with the samples provided by Joly?

Please take this in the right way. Simple uncontrolled listening tests are a proven source of bad information. Our ear/brain rig simply can't hold onto audio memory for long enough to switch capsules on mics, we're intensely subject to label bias, and we get our impression from our point of attention, so listening to a bright section vs a warm section will through off our perception severely. This is not a knock on your abilities, this is simply the status of human evolution in regards to audio (and lots of other things).

Fran

You are right that our brains can easily trick us and no, I haven't done an ABX testing on his samples. No harm done In my defense  the kind of material I usually record (to me!) sounds very different from the drum, guitar and vocal samples usually provided by microphone manufacturers. Recording a wind orchestra or big band with a near coincident pair sounds very different (to me!) than close miking drums or guitar. Perhaps I haven't yet learned to pick the right things out of a drum or guitar recording 

(Aside: the fact that most microphone people advertise their products using drums, guitar and vocals makes it difficult for me (personally!) to pick a microphone suitable to record a section of 5 trumpets or saxophones).

I have been looking for an appropriate AB sample in my recordings. I have never done any real AB recording with these mics, but have found something that is pretty close. In the two clips below you hear the same big band, same music. Recorded on the same Tascam DR-100mkII. One with Rode NT5 stock capsules, the other with Rode NT5 MJE-384K's. These were rehearsals, recorded months apart. If memory serves the MJE-384K recording was done in the room adjacent to the stock NT5 recording. Similar acoustics wise, but somewhat smaller. And it sounds like we didn't have a full saxophone section on the stock NT5 session. The volume of these samples was adjusted to make "Maximum RMS amplitude" the same, so they should sound similar volume wise. No other processing.

Regards, Christine