Hey there. Some background on me, first... For years I had a D8 that I ran out of boards and other peoples' decks. Then I left college and on very rare occasion recorded a few shows with some Core Sounds mics. My D8 eventually stopped recording reliably (probably a head alignment issue). And, to make matters worse, most of my DATs from a decade ago now have lots of drop-outs, event though I stored them properly (I talked to Doug Oade, and he said it was because I recorded on DDS tapes).
I recently got a Microtrack, and just recorded a couple of shows on it, one patching out of someone else's rig, and two with core sounds mics. One turned out great, but in the other, I just wasn't able to avoid the massive amount of crowd noise, even though I used the cards (I've got both sets), and ran them up a few feet above people's heads on a pole.
So, now that I'm no longer a starving college student, I decided to invest in a non-stealthy rig. I bought a TASCAM HD-P2 with a 8Gb CF card (mainly because I used to envy the DA-P1 ;-), the Peluso CEMC6 stereo kit w/ card and hypercard caps, a shure microphone stand, a t-bar and Mogami mic cables. Doug Oade suggested that a dedicated pre-amp wouldn't be necessary, that the HD-P2 itself was more than good enough.
Anyway, on to my questions. First, I have seen on this forum that I should always run the mics w/ the 10db pad. But, I'm not sure how to decide when to use the rolloff filtering on the Pelusos. With the core mics, any time I'm indoors I run the roll-off filter, but that seems not the right thing to do, plus there are two settings. Any practical guidance would be much appreciated.
Second, I set up the rig w/ cardiod caps in my apartment, and pointed it at my computer stereo 10 feet away for a few hours, in order to test battery life and burn in the cables. I was able to get a decent signal, but the recording sounded distant, at any mic config (played around w/ several... that is hard to get right... is anyone selling those templates yet?). The core sounds recording from the same place sounded a lot more true to the sound. Am I doing something wrong, or is it because I don't have the music super-cranked, and it will sound better live?
Third, the flight case that came w/ the mics is OK, but I'd like to cram more in it. Would a regular old music store sell new foam for it? And how do you carve out of it if you're really not artistic, like me?
Finally, what's the history / mechanism for the whole +t thing?
Thanks,
John