Topic: Experimentations with the Belkin TuneTalk, and Battery Box Blues

[SmokinJoe]

Come on guys, let's be nice.  It's not shitty, it's just a stage of an experiment in progress.

I wonder if this is operating on AGC (automatic gain control)?  What AGC does is try to raise the gain in the quiet parts, and lower it in loud parts.  Good for recording a meeting in a conference room, bad for rock concerts.  If you can disable that, you probably should.  One constant level is probably better, even if you can't control it.  At least I would say it's worth a try.

I noticed that when I play it (I use xmms, like media player) the bar graphs show lots of low end, lots of high end, and low in the middle.  Not typical.  I think you've got something EQ'ing the hell out of it.

Were you running those mics in stealth mode, even in a show like the black crowes which allows open taping?  if you tape a band that allows taping (like the crows), get your mics out in the open, even if it's just a little over everyone's head taped to a stick or something.  Ever notice that when you sit down at a show when everyone else is standing up it gets muffled?  It might sound something like that recording.

I would say make sure everything works in steps:
step 1: confirm the ability to record a line level output under controlled conditions.... run line out of a computer or stereo into the Belkin and get a good result.  Then you can walk up to one of us tapers with bigger gear and say "Can I please get a patch?" and get good results.
step 2: go to your buddies place with a huge stereo and crank it all the way up through his speakers, and try to record that on your mics.  Make sure you can do that.  Chances are a concert will be several dBs louder than that, but it's a good start.

Hope that helps.

[dominar]

Well, I couldn't get my Belkin to work very well.  With autogain on I got no sound, with it off I got VERY low sound.  No I used the mics without the battery box.  I need to get a 9Volt before I can try that.

Luckily, I won a R-09 on eBay so hopefully my mics will work with that.

[herkyjerky]

Heh, it's been a while since I've been able to get on here, and though I was able to get a sample online I never got around to posting it!    These FLACs should provide a good comparison... the first one is a "good" recording of a Zappa Plays Zappa concert several months ago that someone made as a stack recording, and the second one is the iPod + TuneTalk (with the auto-gain turned on, if I remember right... it sounds a bit clippy to me anyway, but it's something I can live with for an experiment) from up in the mid-balcony with the TuneTalk and its built-in mics aimed kind of towards the ceiling, heh (I'm not sure exactly what direction they're really aimed - outwards? upwards?). It's the same song ("The Black Page") and it starts out with solely percussion and then guitars etc. about halfway through. Unfortunately, I don't have the details of the "good" recording anymore so all I remember from the .torrent was that it was a stack recording. I don't think I fiddled with the TuneTalk version of the recording much, though, so it should give you a pretty good idea of how it might stand up against more standard equipment.

"good" version
tunetalk version