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

[Ozpeter]

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

Thanks for the tip! 

[Ozpeter]

I've just got back from the local festival where there was lots of high-quality amplified music (for on-stage dancers etc), and some actual musical performances - and I am extremely pleased with the recordings on the Mic Pro.  A lot of it was as loud as I would care to expose my ears to, but no distortion visible on the waveforms.  The result will be on YouTube in the next 24 hours, link to follow.

Luckily when I accidentally knocked my Mic Pro from the magnetic mount I was using, while fiddling with my video camera, I realised at once, and managed to spot it in the night-time grass....  No harm done.

And - just before I left the house, there was a firmware update for the Mic Pro - and it seems they may have changed how the "processed" internal recordings are created.   In my early tests some of the settings such as EQ didn't seem to do anything, and I think that's something they have fixed - I will test it shortly.  But my festival recordings were captured using the "original" setting, and there's no change in the audio that I can hear. 

[Ozpeter]

https://youtu.be/AYckdDIFqnQ

My channel is not monetized.

Here is my 40 minute recording at a local outdoor festival, which I think demonstrates the qualities of this tiny device very well.   There are various amateur music and dance acts performing live or to recorded backing tracks, and I've included some ambient audio captured while walking round the festival site.  There are chapter markings so you don't have to listen to the whole thing... just skip from section to section if you don't have 40 minutes to spare!

The fact that it's in the open air of course helps avoid colouration of the audio by a building's internal resonance, but on the other hand the sound quality of the amplification used by some of the acts has a significant effect on the outcome.  Fortunately the guys operating the PA really knew what they were doing in my opinion, with the sound being presented in stereo and with a good undistorted wide frequency response.  Wind was light but I used the optional wider wind muff to be sure.

At no point did I hear, or see in the waveforms when zoomed right in, any clipping at all.  I stood close to the stages, and the sound level was as much as my elderly ears could handle, frankly.  And today I don't seem to be hearing much... For each recorded file, I reversed the channels (as the recorder was mounted upside down beneath the camera), added some HF boost to brighten the sound which does seem to be needed, to my taste, and then I normalised the result.  During a couple of recordings, there was an "untypical transient" which dictated the normalised level to be a bit low, so I used a limiter to trim just those peaks by about 3dB - the value was chosen so that only the single transient peak was actually affected.

While getting the audio and video tracks lined up in sync, I switched between hearing the camera audio and the Mic Pro audio, and although I have always thought the particular camera has good audio, I could tell that it was very compressed in dynamic range compared to the Mic Pro uncompressed dynamics.  Quite an eye opener.  Or ear opener.

All in all, this experience makes me feel that the Mic Pro really is a ground breaking device, in terms of its size and audio quality, and its ease of use - all you can do is to turn it on and press record!  I am forming a plan to use it to record some kind of classical music performance, on a well-placed stand - I really do think it would do a perfectly good job for capturing archive or radio broadcast audio very, very simply and very, very unobtrusively.

[hardrain62]

For those curious about battery life, recording for 1hr and 40mins brought the battery from 100% to 85%. Pretty dang good.

[Ozpeter]

For those curious about battery life, recording for 1hr and 40mins brought the battery from 100% to 85%. Pretty dang good.

I left mine running all night and got 8 hours.  Ideal for 8 hour shows... Charging always seems fast, too.

[Ozpeter]

"Mic Pro Maintenance Update 1

1. Optimized Timecode Usage:

- Timecode will continue to run for 5 hours after the receiver is powered off.

- Internal recording on the transmitter now only retains elementary timecode.

2. Optimized LED Off Performance: Improved the behavior and performance when LED lights are turned off.

3. Adjusted Internal Recording File Type: Files are now saved as default algorithm-processed files.

4. Other Known Issues and Experience Optimizations: Fixed various known bugs and improved overall user experience."

---------------------------------------

I've now done some tests of settings using the app, with the firmware updated. 

I first recorded some baseline white noise using the "original" and "stereo" settings, to compare the "processed" sound later.

When "processed" and "stereo" is set for internal recording, I am unable to detect any significant change when setting the tonal characteristics or the polar pickup characteristics.  That's using what is left of my hearing (!), and also checking frequency analysis of 30 second recordings of white noise.  I have to say that the while noise plots look pretty good to my amateur eyes - a very even response down to 20Hz or less, with a quite sharp cutoff at 20kHz which probably reflects the type of white noise I was using (through quite good bookshelf speakers, but the source being YouTube on the TV!).  I also tested the auto level setting and that too made no difference.  Likewise low cut did nothing.

However, when set to "processed" and "mono", the various polar pattern settings do work when recording internally.  But it's not the real thing - it's simply AI detecting where you are speaking from, and then processing the sound to fit the set polar pattern description.  When checking polar patterns with music, there is little or no effect when rotating the mic relative to the music source.  So, if you want to just record your voice, then those polar pattern settings might be useful, but they won't help with music recordings which is what this forum is about, in general. 

So - overall my advice is still to simply set the device to "stereo" and "original", but to be quite sure, set the other settings to default values.  And then never change the settings again.  And do not buy two of these in order to use them as a stereo pair (with each set to mono) unless you want to replicate a pair of spaced omnis.  I suspect the device is inherently an omni device unless AI is brought into play using the settings.  And then the polar patterns are only good for voice.

It could be handy if they updated the firmware so that the settings relating to frequency response made a difference to stereo recordings, but given that it's not hard to tweak the response to taste in post, maybe that's not a big deal.  I do find myself brightening the sound in post, but the outcome is fine - it's not as if the HF isn't there, it just seems to need a little lifting.

[Ozpeter]

I just can't leave this subject alone!

I just did some comparative listening to music and to white noise, recording with the Zoom M2 MicTrak and with the Insta360 Mic Pro.

The M2 is supposed to have "F" series preamps and untypically large mic capsules.  As it has no inputs and can only record from those capsules, it seems reasonable to assume that Zoom chose capsules which would merit having a good preamp downstream.  And it's popular with those who have purchased it.  And mine was to hand for easy use in this comparison.

I am attaching the frequency analysis plots.  I used different scales, one of which shows low frequencies better, and the other plot shows a smoother line for possibly easier comparison.  The recordings were made just using good bookshelf speakers, with the devices about half a metre away from one of the stereo pair.  And I was careful that the mic capsules of the two devices were in the same location.  Each file was separately normalised.

In both plots the green lines are from the Mic Pro and the red lines from the M2. 

My take on these plots is that the Mic Pro has a flatter response than the M2, particularly in the upper frequencies.  You can only use the plots for comparison, not for absolute measurement, because of the less than ideal way the recording was made.  But none the less, the Mic Pro does seem to have a greater HF extension than the M2.  Both the mics show a sharp cut off at around 20kHz but that relates to the source.

Just listening to the playback of these files, the Mic Pro sounds less 'coloured' than the M2.  Overall, these plots seem to me to support my view that the Mic Pro is a device which should be taken seriously.

[Ozpeter]

How to make the Mic Pro less interesting to security at event checks...

https://youtube.com/shorts/VSuo3xRqZMY?feature=share

[meltycrayon]

How to make the Mic Pro less interesting to security at event checks...

https://youtube.com/shorts/VSuo3xRqZMY?feature=share

You forgot "condom box."

[Ozpeter]

How to make the Mic Pro less interesting to security at event checks...

https://youtube.com/shorts/VSuo3xRqZMY?feature=share

You forgot "condom box."

Now there's an idea...

[gambra]

I had a similar idea as well!

[mccordo]

Solid ideas! I was thinking about putting the band's logo on there and wearing it as a "button" to get in and then placing it where it needs to be to record the show.

[Ozpeter]

Indeed, some great ideas there for the display!

I've been doing some comparisons (sourced from the hifi) with another recorder in the MicTrak series, the M3.  Once again, I think the Mic Pro has the edge.  Once again, the Mic Pro has more at the bottom end and needs a little help at the top end, but 'out of the box' it just sounds 'better', including the stereo image.  I compared the noise from each by normalising some room silence, and the noise from the Mic Pro wasn't so hissy as the noise from the M3, although that could be due to its naturally less HF sound.  But the M3 had a crackly sound happening, whereas the Mic Pro had nothing amiss in the noise of that sort.

I guess I must bite the bullet and get out my costly Sennheiser MKH M/S rig and compare with that...  That at least should make a good reference point.

[mepaca]

I didn't want any logo on my screen so with my phone I took a photo lens side down on a table and got a
completely black photo and loaded that onto my screen. I have an MKH m/s setup also. As good as the
Insta360 is, that's going to be an unfair comparison.

[papabliss]

To get past security, do you think would sticking it to the back of your phone like a phone grip would work?