Topic: M-Audio MicroTrack 2496 - *actual* real-life experiences thread

[it-goes-to-eleven]

You're welcome!  Good question.  I missed including that detail.  This was into the 1/8.

I was not in a position to look at the battery indicator. I did look at it after the show last night but I don't remember what fraction was showing.  Not that it would mean much.  It is so nice that the 722 just gives you volts. Even though 7.5 volts on a 6000 maH is not the same as 7.5 v on a 1500 maH, it is nice to have a real number.

[JasonSobel]

Even though Jason says he wants to record at 16/48, I suspect that his MT was set for 24/48 at the time he checked the record time available.

That's exactly what happened.  after setting up, but still pre-show, I realized my error and that the 4 gig card would hold approx. 6 hours at 16/48.

So here's what happened last night.  Preshow, I'm playing around with the unit, because I didn't have a chance to do any tests beforehand, just barely had enough time for the battery to fully charge.  still pre-show, I'm all like "cool, I can make it record"  I go through all the settings, the menus are very straight-forward.  I'm plugged into AC power (just the MicroTrack, everything else is my normal SLA setup), so I leave it on, and I'm good to go.

The band comes onstage, I get my D8 rolling, and then, bam, the Microtrack freezes.  after some fiddling, and holding down the power button for a long time (probably similar to the 20 seconds that Todd experienced), I get the unit to shut off.  turn it back on and hit record.  By this time, the DAT has been rolling for about 2 minutes.  Luckily for me, the band had been tuning and getting ready, so I didn't actually miss any music (not that it really mattered, because I had the DAT going anyway).

but then it recorded fine, with nothing out of the ordinary for the first set, 2 hours and 10 minutes.  At the start of the second set, it does not freeze and acts as it should.  records fine for the 1 hour second set.

again, just for clarity, this was out of the V3's S/PDIF coax out, set at 16/48.  I was using a 4 GB Sandisk Ultra II CF card.  the microtrack was plugged in to AC power, so I don't have anything to report yet on battery life.

One strange observation.  The green light under the level controls, doesn't that mean that you're getting signal?  I need to read the manual more closely.  Anyway, during the first set, I saw those flash off and on a bit.  I hope that doesn't mean that there are drop outs in the recording.  I'll have to look at the file this afternoon when I get home from work.

both sets together were 2.04 gigs.  using a USB 2 card reader, it took 16 minutes to copy the files to my computer.

the other good thing about the experience last night was the show.  Man, it was GREAT.  really, really awesome show.
However, even with the Microtrack, 3 and a half hours of sleep just isn't enough.  it's going to be a LONG day at work...

[L Ron Hoover]

Yep, those are just signal indicator lights.  They were handy last night.. I was able to peak into my pocket and see that I was still probably rolling.  Not that there was much I could do if they went out..


If anyone would like to host some samples of the beck show, please drop me a pm.  It will be a while before the seed gets cranking.

FWIW, it was clipping along pretty well when I left the house.

[Colin Liston]

I used mine last night a Los Lobos.  Ran it out of the SBM-1 > coax in.
It worked great for the first set, then right before the band came on as the lights went out, damn thing froze up.
I did everything even pulled out the CF card and put it back in but it was still on and frozen.  Finally I don't know what I did but it powered down and started back up.  Missed the first tune but had the DAT rolling.

Anyway, my first impression is that this is a glorified JB3, but has potential.

[dylygruvn]

Got my MT on wednesday.  Made the decision after reading this thread when someone confirmed it worked at 16/44.1 through the spdif input.  I bought it in person at a store in Toronto ($499 cdn) that received their shipment on monday  I was the first person to buy one from them and they had a stack of 15 MT's sitting there.  The guys in the store were dying to try it out but had not opened up one of the boxes yet.  I was surprised to find it so easily as I usually order all my gear from the USA and have it shipped.

I only had time to charge it on wednesday night.  First charge took about 2.5 hours until the charging was complete.  I turned it off and then immediately charged it again and it took another 1 to 1.5 hours untill it indicated it was fully charged again.  Then I did the same yesterday when i got home, again about 1 to 1.5 hours till charged.  I wanted to make sure it was fully charged before testing.

I wasn't able to really spend much time testing it last night but I did let it record until the battery died.  I didn't have a digi-cable that would fit the the tight spdif plug on the MT so I simply ran the 1/8" out of my laptop to the 1/8" on the MT.  I recorded a MP3 at the lowest quality setting since i only have a 2GB CF card.  I was able to set levels at first when I was playing around with the unit trying to get a signal but once it started recording it appeared that I had no control over the levels anymore (hold was not on).  Not sure why this happened.  File plays OK but the loud parts were clipped as expected since it was going over a lot. 

This morning i checked the file and it recorded for 4.5 hours.  I also wasted at least half an hour trying out various digi-cables and playing around with levels and such.  I think I would have gotten over 5 hours on the internal battery if I had simply hit record.  I'm not sure if this is significantly more than i will get using the spdif.  I plan on doing that today, now that I have a digi-cable that fits into the connector (had to shave off the plastic on one side of the cable to make it fit beside the USB plug). 

Hope to be up and recording shows again soon. 

Thanks for all the help on this thread,
Jeff

[it-goes-to-eleven]

the cmc6 and the ccm series can run on everything from 12-48 without any problem , but you have to check if there enouth current on the outputs to drive the preamp

Oleg, you're right.  The cmc3 is 48v only and the cmc6 is 12-48v.

But wait, this source says 12 or 48v and that the impedance changes. I hope that includes everything in between.  Schoeps says the cmc6 has "dual voltage security".  That sorta implies either/or.

http://www.noyzboyz.nl/schoeps.html
http://www.schoeps.de/E-2004/cmc.html

I guess we should start a 'phantom on mt' thread to discuss which mics can work at 30 volts and related issues.  I'd like to call MA about the 30 volts but probably won't have time today.

[John Kelly]

Before people start calling it might be important to try your mics out first...

[it-goes-to-eleven]

I think I'd rather risk a call than risk a $1700 mic 

[nic]

I think I'd rather risk a call than risk a $1700 mic 

under powering will not damage the mic

[dnsacks]

I ran cmc6 with an oade m118 (providing 18 volts of phantom power) quite a few times without problem (fwiw)

[oleg]

I think I'd rather risk a call than risk a $1700 mic 

you dont risk anything if you power the 48 mike with 30 phantom :-)
the cmc3 is intend to work with 12 v , but it can run on 48 as well( i did it a few times in my life with no problem when i need another cmc but didn't have  12v separate phantom on the mixer ) but then it drows about 10 ma   what might be critical for some  inputs ..
the schoeps cmc6 ,cmc3 or ccms can run on everything in between . the cmc 5 which is 48ph only wouldn't work properly with low voltage, it would distort on very low spl and the self noise will go up drastically  
lets say that that m -audio mostly hit hard  all the octava and low cost chiniz users which runs 48 v
  the others who can afford the mkhs ,sankens , neumans ,dpa or any other  quality mikes -usially can afford deneky  ps-2  as well if they decide  to  run straight forward :-)

[neutrino]

Just received my MT and have got it charging up, but I did have to see how the unit responded to my Hitachi 6gb microdrive. The microdrive I have was taken out of a Ipod mini and I have read about capability problems do to an alleged Apple code which was written to the drive making it unusable on certain devices. The MT booted up with no errors with the Hitachi drive. The drive formatted very quickly and displayed just under three hours of record time available at 24/96. Will try a 24/96 recording once the charging cycle is complete.
dB-

p.s. added comparison pics of the MT with an M1/SBM1/Sonosax

http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=50750.0

[goose]

Actually Tim, you can easily run the AT853Rx on less than 48v.  You can run any voltage below 48 and the 853 power modules will simply take whatever voltage down to the proper operating range.   I have used 18volts to power them before.

If the p48 active naks use a similar power module, they will work just fine as well. 

[oleg]

When the phantom issue becomes just that, is when I want to stealth with the microtracker and get a 24 bit recording without inserting a PSP2 or something akin to it in front.  I will not be able to run my AT853Rx mics or my p48 active mod Naks 300s straight into the micrtotrack and get 24 bit if this thing ouptuts 30.  I am unable to prodce 24 bit stealth tapes with this unit by itself, seriously diminshing the value of the unit for me atleast.  Running a pre in front of it is not that big a deal, but it's disappointing when the setup could easily be mics > microtrack.

Let's keep our fingers crosssed, hopefully it will output a true 48 volts.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------snip----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




the AT  can run on everything between12-52 or without phantom at all :-)( electret mike -bias from 1/8 pl)

i dont think that the phantom power would  be fix by firmware update ( the same for the battery life issiu)
they would need to redesign the whale power circuit which might bring  to design completely new board - or almost completely new product .
like every new product of its kind , m-audio made allot of mistakes  and compromises
 and  these  mistakes and compromises  are part of the final cost of the product ,might be that without these  it wouldn't go to the market at all.

[justread]

Ok, well here's an odd thing.  Inverting the JB3 recording and mixing it into the MicroTrack recording yields a completely flat wav form.  However the hash for the files (pre-inversion in the case of the jb3) are very different.  Any reason for this?

A 1 bit difference between two files could result in very different md5 hashes. 

Yeah but wouldn't that mean I couldn't have a completely flat wav form?

Is there any header info in the WAV files?

Quite possible.  How would I go about discovering if there is?

Well, if you're in the PC world and aren't scared of a non-GUI method, there's always the ol' reliable "fc /b file1.wav file2.wav > diffs.txt" from a command prompt to generate a file (diffs.txt) with the hex differences and/or offsets.  Works best if they're close, though.  If they're mixing to a flat wave, you're presumably quite close.