Re: [LAU] RME analog out of phase to ADAT connected Behringer analog out

On Tue, 2011-06-14 at 21:06 +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 03:23:47PM +0200, Cedric Roux wrote:
>
> > I liked the very end, about adding an EQ to a (as far as I understood)
> > cheap microphone and get the same sound than a more expensive one.
> > Funny.
>
> It's true, as long as we talking about just on-axis FR differences.
>
> What sets a quality mic apart are things like
>
> - noise level,
> - off-axis frequency response,
> - absence of FR errors that can't be EQ'd easily,
> e.g. high-Q resonances,
> - RFI rejection,
> - quality of construction and materials,
> - accurate and complete specs.
>
> The first two really matter when a mic is not used for a single
> instrument or voice, but for a complete orchestra, ensemble or
> section of an orchestra.
>
> Consider a mic used as part of e.g. an ORTF stereo pair for
> a classical music recording. It has to pick up the complete
> orchestra plus room sound - from all directions, not just
> front - with the same good frequency response. Levels can
> be easily more than 60 dB down compared to what's seen
> by a solo mic. For this sort of thing you need the star
> names.
>
> For once I'd agree with Ralf that there are some things you
> can't fix with EQ.
>
> > (I don't claim expensive mikes are useless, it's all about noise
> > at this point I guess, for what I understand about this business...)
> > Anyway, thanks for this link, it was very instructive.
>
> Yes, some good myth-busting.
>
> Ciao,
>

FWIW those microphones among other things are that expensive because
there's much failures for the capsules. The directional characteristic
for large-membrane microphones is set by the amount of the level for the
front and backside. For a Neumann and Brauner a capsule's front and
backside is as equal as possible. If a capsule hasn't very similar front
and back sides they still can be used for cheaper microphones, that e.g.
just need a front, but no backside. You can assume that for less
expensive microphones they use every capsule without making a selection.
For expensive microphones they take care for nearly everything, even the
transformer plates are important. The only thing they do not, is
selecting semiconductors. Some people build custom versions of famous
microphones, with selected semiconductors and voodoo cables. We compared
those custom microphones with the standard versions and there was no
difference. Just the tubes are important. No china ware! If you take a
look at the capsules you will see differences for the wholes. Some
vendors do long time trial and error development regarding to this and
others just use capsules with no-matter-how holes or they guess it's
enough to copy the drill wholes of good microphones, but it isn't that
easy. The power supplies of expensive microphones IMO have an unneeded
filter overkill, but it's better to do more than is needed than to use a
power supply with bad filtering. Those companies pay engineers for doing
the soldering, it isn't done by children and housewives, at least it
wasn't done some years ago.
You might compare the soldering of instrument cables. Some days ago I
got some Thomann cables and some Cordial cables, both are cheap cables,
but the soldering for the Thomann is very bad and the soldering for the
Cordial is very good. Bad soldering soon or later will cause issues.
And last but not least, they pay idiots like me to listen to the
microphones before being shipped and the boss will listen to those
microphones too.
Of cause, a cheap dynamic microphone for the vocalist on stage is better
than a expensive large-membrane microphone, so the usage is important
too.
I heard room sound for orchestras done with large-membrane Neumann that
was incredible. You only can do this with Neumann and Brauner
large-membrane. Btw. even if it should be possible to improve sound of
cheap microphones to get a sound near to an expensive microphone, you
need expensive anlog EQs or an expensive converters to use digital EQs,
if not the EQs won't improve the sound, but rather add new issues. Note!
An analog EQ can cause phase issues, so a tip that might work with
top-notch equipment by no means is a good tip when using home recording
equipment.
I never met a guy* from AES or VDT who wasn't a good engineer. *(I never
met any engineering women *lol*, neitehr gifted, nor untalented.) If
those folks pay for expensive microphones, they do it for good reasons.
If those guys claim that you can do a lot with an EQ, they perhaps
aren't talking about cheap EQs. It's possible to do a good mastering
without compression, you just need very good EQs to place instruments
and vocals within the 'room' of the frequencies. It's hard to this at
home or with semiprofessional equipment.
Recordings can sound as good as reality ex 48 KHz, when they were done
with good = usually very expensive equipment. This get lost for CDs, but
even when listening to CDs the responding qualities of different
microphones are audible. You can hear Peter Gabriel's breath with
transparency for his studio recordings, you can't hear Rory Gallagher's
vocals on the Irish Tour album that transparent.
And here it is again. A studio recording hasn't the energy of a good
live performance, hence it's important to have a better sound quality.
Rory Galagher live '74 has so much energy that there isn't the need for
a sound quality that is needed for synthetic music like it's done by
Peter Gabriel. IMO the needed quality depends to the kind of recording.
Recoding a Jazz trio is easier to do than recording 30 synth, just
because there's more room to allocate the instruments within the
'frequency room'.
So IMO there aren't no universal tips, like use the EQ to do this and
that, certainly there are some rules of thumb. Hifi speakers get
stressed by some frequencies that can't be played by those speakers, so
you might cut them etc.. This and similar rules of thumbs are helpful.

Oops a novel, but it's just broached.

2 Cents,

Ralf

_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
Received on Wed Jun 15 04:15:01 2011