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

[hardrain62]

Going to try out my Insta360 Mic Pro tonight. Is there a recommended gain setting for a rock show? Or is the gain setting irrelevant if recording in 32bit?

[gambra]

Going to try out my Insta360 Mic Pro tonight. Is there a recommended gain setting for a rock show? Or is the gain setting irrelevant if recording in 32bit?

No gain level needed on 32bit, can leave the "TX Gain" to 0db setting. Pretty sure anything like that or the noise reduction is software based too so will be really rough sounding for a show. Main thing is just make sure it's set to 32bit and Stereo. Turn off Stereo for a second to check the "Original" File Type too before turning it back on.

[Ozpeter]

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!

What MSED (and others like it) does is to convert the recorded file back into M/S format (in essence reversing the formula used to create an X/Y file from mid and side mics), then as you say, the side component is reduced.  Or in fact you can increase the mid component - it's just a matter of the proportions of the signals.  If processing in 32 bit float, I don't think it matters whether you increase mid or decrease side because any resulting clipping can then be fixed, but in any other format, decreasing the side is safer.  Then, the MSED VST re-encodes the rebalanced audio back into X/Y format for normal playback.  MSED doesn't care whether or not the audio was recorded in MS in the first place - it works just the same on audio from any other stereo mic technique. 

Actually it would be useful if Insta360 provided a width control in the app, but I suspect they just don't see this device as a field / location recorder, so they may not update the firmware to provide that.  I forget now whether I suggested it to them.

As for the hardcore / metal band - well, I'm a retired classical music recording engineer / producer / editor.  And some of it was very contemporary, and probably more confronting than Knocked Loose!  What a great band name!

[Ozpeter]

Being impatient I tried the Knocked Loose sample - but using the only thing I have to hand, namely a VR headset! It didn't provide much volume, and really I can't comment much, apart from in respect of the stereo image. From that I deduced that you were not right at the front, so the band were not very spread out, but the audience interventions sounded great - almost a binaural experience as they seemed all round me! Anyway, I should be able to listen properly at the weekend.

[hardrain62]

Last night I taped Jimmy Eat World with both the Instamic Pro Plus C Stereo and the Insta360 Mic Pro in "cardioid" mode. Being that I had them mounted on different areas of my person, I can't offer a true A/B comparison, but my initial observation is that the Instamic Pro Plus C sounds significantly mid-scooped compared to the Insta360. The Instamic has mega high and low end, while the Insta360 sounds pretty neutral to me, but bass-heavy. I may actually try the bass roll-off feature next time, but all-in-all, the Insta360 sounds far more accurate to what I heard in the room. Both setups will require EQ for a more pleasing final result, but I think the Insta360 is a far easier jumping off point than the Instamic. My hunch is that the Instamic has some built-in V-shape coloring for content creators so that audio sounds "sweeter" right out of the box.

The Insta360's 32-bit stereo does seem to be legit; all peaks were recovered after normalizing in Audition. Also, the included windscreen with the Insta360 seems to do the trick; the venue I was in last night, a covered outdoor amphitheater, has huge fans on the ceiling to keep the crowd cool, and I have not yet detected any wind noise from those.

Do note that the Insta360's app does the same thing that the Instamic's app sometimes does, which is that the app/your phone disconnects from the device while recording. This does not stop your recording, it just unpairs your phone and the device to use the controls via your phone. When I noticed this after the show was over, I simply turned off the Insta360 manually with the power button, and all was well; the entire show was still there. I'm not certain what would happen if you tried to re-pair the device to your phone. Ironically, the Instamic app kept ticking the whole show!

I'm very keen to continue experimenting with the Insta360. At $99, only time will tell how the unit holds up, but there's serious potential for our uses here.

[gambra]

Being impatient I tried the Knocked Loose sample - but using the only thing I have to hand, namely a VR headset! It didn't provide much volume, and really I can't comment much, apart from in respect of the stereo image. From that I deduced that you were not right at the front, so the band were not very spread out, but the audience interventions sounded great - almost a binaural experience as they seemed all round me! Anyway, I should be able to listen properly at the weekend.

I was hard stage left at the show, if I'd been right at the front I'd probably have died in the pit. Not just with the heat at the show but also the crowd shoving pretty hard and crowd surfers! Tapers can talk about a venue sweet spot all they want until they run up against a hardcore punk crowd 

[al w.]

fyi these are $85 on amazon right now. not sure if it's a prime day deal or not, but thought I'd mention it