Topic: Insta360 Mic Pro - New wireless mic with 32-bit stereo internal recording

[Ozpeter]

Taped Knocked Loose tonight and have to say this little thing held its own surprisingly well! Taped it in 32bit stereo and in Omni config which is the default. It ended up sounding a little roomy so next test will probably be in Cardioid config to see the difference.

Sadly at the moment I am away from home without the means to play your samples, but I will certainly do so as soon as I can - thanks for uploading them!

The different polar patterns, eg Omni and Cardioid, only apply when recording in mono.  I'm assuming you recorded with the device configured with the "original" setting turned on as that would over-ride any other settings.  Indeed it has a wide stereo field, which I'm inclined to think is about 150 degrees, but that can be narrowed in post using a VST like "Voxengo MSED".  It seems that the way it works is basically a form of M/S recording, but "MSED" will happily reduce the width of any stereo recording regardless of how the mics were arranged. 

[Ozpeter]

Used at a recent Black Crowes show. The recording is pretty much complete distortion

Was that after the essential step of normalising the recording?  Off the top of my head it should be able to handle 130dB, which is close to the threshold of pain.  The Zoom M2 MicTrak can handle a little more at 135dB but anything louder than that is best avoided!

[aaronji]

It's 130 dB at 10% THD. Much lower at, say, 1% THD.

[Ozpeter]

It's 130 dB at 10% THD. Much lower at, say, 1% THD.

That's a very good point.  Well, so far when examining transients on my Mic Pro recordings, I've not seen any clipping, but I admit I've not used it for rock concert recordings, which is of course what this forum is largely about!  My recorded transients include door slamming and dropping a 3m aluminium ladder accidentally onto a concrete floor close to the mic pro.  On Saturday I hope to record, out of doors, a group of taiko drummers, where there should be plenty of transients, and I'm hoping to get stupidly close (despite giving myself hopefully temporary hearing problems when testing the Mic Pro inside headphones using gliding test tones...).  I will of course report the outcome.

[Ozpeter]

Just a FYI: If you'd increase the FFT-size (see attached pic), you will get more 'frequency bins' in the chart, hence some more detail at the lower end.

True.  I did some tests using a large FFT size using a gliding test tones played into my headphones when wearing them with the Mic Pro inside one of them - as one does - and the 20Hz start of the glide was very clearly present on the graph.  (Somehow the concept of a tiny mic capsule capturing very low frequencies surprises me, but I'm easily surprised).  The downside of large FFT sizes for me is that the line gets rather spiky which can make comparisons harder, compared to a less detailed but smoother line from small values.

[gambra]

Taped Knocked Loose tonight and have to say this little thing held its own surprisingly well! Taped it in 32bit stereo and in Omni config which is the default. It ended up sounding a little roomy so next test will probably be in Cardioid config to see the difference.

Sadly at the moment I am away from home without the means to play your samples, but I will certainly do so as soon as I can - thanks for uploading them!

The different polar patterns, eg Omni and Cardioid, only apply when recording in mono.  I'm assuming you recorded with the device configured with the "original" setting turned on as that would over-ride any other settings.  Indeed it has a wide stereo field, which I'm inclined to think is about 150 degrees, but that can be narrowed in post using a VST like "Voxengo MSED".  It seems that the way it works is basically a form of M/S recording, but "MSED" will happily reduce the width of any stereo recording regardless of how the mics were arranged.

Interesting! This kind of mic setup and 32bit audio is beyond my usual wheelhouse such as using VST plugins like this but will fiddle with it a bit tomorrow. By "reduce the width" its essentially just reducing the level on the side channel correct?

Also as a possible warning Knocked Loose are a hardcore/metal band so might be a harder listen depending on your musical taste!

[farve4]

Used at a recent Black Crowes show. The recording is pretty much complete distortion

Was that after the essential step of normalising the recording?  Off the top of my head it should be able to handle 130dB, which is close to the threshold of pain.  The Zoom M2 MicTrak can handle a little more at 135dB but anything louder than that is best avoided!

honestly I just gave a quick listen on my laptop and havent played with it yet