[Les Cargill[_4_]]

I have no other ribbons to compare it to. Street
price is $90 these days. So why not?

The pattern is nice and tight and it picks up
very little room . It's also my first fig-8.
That's nice. It is rather dull-sounding.

It's dark and wooly. It sort-of works on acoustic
guitar if you want a ... vintage sort of sound. You
can add EQ to the upper few octaves to brighten it.
But it mainly sounds muddy on my dreadnoughts. Perhaps
on a parlor?

Seems okay on vox. I suspect a better singer than I
would sound better on it. I have the sort of voice that sounds
best on an SM57.

It shines on electric. Nice and detailed without being
scratchy or fizzy.

Just for giggles, I ran it coincident with a Behringer
ECM8000, took a deconvolution between them, then applied
the convolution to the ECM. It's not a bad mild "stereo"
solution and I'd defy anyone to double-blind tell which
is which.


I suspect the convolution kernel plus the ECM8000 will prove
more valuable than the mic itself over time - just throw the ECM8000
on something, then "I wonder what that would sound like..." and
presto. Fortunately, it comes with a nice case so it can rest quietly
on the shelf fully protected.

Conclusion: You can't go wrong for the price. Obviously there is the
Fathead and various Royer offerings ( and an apparently growing list of
others ). The mic is rather dull which is what gives it some measure of
value - it's a contrast to condensers.

I'd like to try it on a good singer and snare some day. Something tells
me that about three-four feet out, even with the top of the kik drum,
against a nice pair of overheads in a good room might be a fine drum
mic setup. There is an emerging market of phantom-powered buffers
designed for ribbons; might try one for it and my various dynamics.

--
Les Cargill

[Phil Allison[_4_]]

Les Cargill wrote:

--------------------------
I have no other ribbons to compare it to. Street
price is $90 these days. So why not?

The pattern is nice and tight and it picks up
very little room .


** FFS it's fig 8 pattern, so it picks up damn near the whole room.


It's also my first fig-8.

** No fooling ....


That's nice. It is rather dull-sounding.


** Like all fig 8s, it has a strong "proximity effect" that boosts the low end when sited close to sources - it ain't dull.


It's dark and wooly.


** No, it has strong proximity effect.


Seems okay on vox. I suspect a better singer than I
would sound better on it. I have the sort of voice that sounds
best on an SM57.


** Or a telephone .....

Try the same mic in a large room at longer distance and you will get a very different impression.

And don't use your own voice as a sound quality test.


There is an emerging market of phantom-powered buffers
designed for ribbons; might try one for it and my various dynamics.

** Don't waste your money.


..... Phil

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Phil Allison wrote:
Les Cargill wrote:

--------------------------
I have no other ribbons to compare it to. Street
price is $90 these days. So why not?

The pattern is nice and tight and it picks up
very little room .


** FFS it's fig 8 pattern, so it picks up damn near the whole room.



So I ran an omni condenser[1] coincident with it. I normalized
both tracks to the same level (using the RMS calculation in CoolEdit ).

The end result is that the R144 has less *apparent* room. If you
split the tracks left and right, the room tone is a few dB more
with the ribbon than with the omni. This shows up in headphones
and on the meters.

Are you then saying that this is attributable to proximity effect?

I was... about a foot away from them, with an acoustic guitar.


It's also my first fig-8.

** No fooling ....





snip
.... Phil


--
Les Cargill

[Don Pearce[_3_]]

On Sun, 3 Dec 2017 11:43:02 -0600, Les Cargill
wrote:

Are you then saying that this is attributable to proximity effect?

I was... about a foot away from them, with an acoustic guitar.


Get yourself more than 6 feet away if you want to drop proximity
effect to a reasonable level.

d

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

[Don Pearce[_3_]]

On Sun, 03 Dec 2017 18:28:52 GMT, (Don Pearce) wrote:

On Sun, 3 Dec 2017 11:43:02 -0600, Les Cargill
wrote:

Are you then saying that this is attributable to proximity effect?

I was... about a foot away from them, with an acoustic guitar.


Get yourself more than 6 feet away if you want to drop proximity
effect to a reasonable level.

d

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

I've made plots of the bass lift of a figure 8 out to 1 metre away.
You can see there is still plenty of lift going on at that distance

http://www.soundthoughts.co.uk/look/bass_lift.png

The vertical scale is decibels

d

[Mike Rivers[_2_]]

On 12/3/2017 12:43 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
I was... about a foot away from them, with an acoustic guitar.

If you're only about a foot away from the front of the mic, unless
you're in a really small room or the back side of the mic is a foot away
from a wall, you're going to get much more guitar than room in the
recording, same as you would with an omni mic - except that the omni
will have negligible proximity effect.

--

For a good time, call http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com

[Phil Allison[_4_]]

Les Cargill wrote:

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



The pattern is nice and tight and it picks up
very little room .


** FFS it's fig 8 pattern, so it picks up damn near the whole room.



So I ran an omni condenser[1] coincident with it. I normalized
both tracks to the same level (using the RMS calculation in CoolEdit ).

The end result is that the R144 has less *apparent* room. If you
split the tracks left and right, the room tone is a few dB more
with the ribbon than with the omni. This shows up in headphones
and on the meters.

Are you then saying that this is attributable to proximity effect?

I was... about a foot away from them, with an acoustic guitar.



** A guitar is a relatively large sound source - at one foot the mic is in the "near field" so room sound is defeated PLUS the proximity effect of a fig 8 boosts the guitar's sound, but not room sound arriving from far away.

Your comment about having a tight pattern is what is wrong, a false assumption based on a meaningless test.


..... Phil

[[email protected]]

On Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 1:41:39 PM UTC-5, Don Pearce wrote:
On Sun, 03 Dec 2017 18:28:52 GMT, (Don Pearce) wrote:

On Sun, 3 Dec 2017 11:43:02 -0600, Les Cargill
wrote:

Are you then saying that this is attributable to proximity effect?

I was... about a foot away from them, with an acoustic guitar.


Get yourself more than 6 feet away if you want to drop proximity
effect to a reasonable level.

d

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

I've made plots of the bass lift of a figure 8 out to 1 metre away.
You can see there is still plenty of lift going on at that distance

http://www.soundthoughts.co.uk/look/bass_lift.png

The vertical scale is decibels

d

thats funny
Figure 8 at the top

refers to the mic pattern, not the number of the figure.
m

[Don Pearce[_3_]]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2017 07:40:04 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 1:41:39 PM UTC-5, Don Pearce wrote:
On Sun, 03 Dec 2017 18:28:52 GMT, (Don Pearce) wrote:

On Sun, 3 Dec 2017 11:43:02 -0600, Les Cargill
wrote:

Are you then saying that this is attributable to proximity effect?

I was... about a foot away from them, with an acoustic guitar.


Get yourself more than 6 feet away if you want to drop proximity
effect to a reasonable level.

d

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

I've made plots of the bass lift of a figure 8 out to 1 metre away.
You can see there is still plenty of lift going on at that distance

http://www.soundthoughts.co.uk/look/bass_lift.png

The vertical scale is decibels

d

thats funny
Figure 8 at the top

refers to the mic pattern, not the number of the figure.
m

Yep, I could probably have labelled that one a bit better.

d

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Don Pearce wrote:
On Sun, 03 Dec 2017 18:28:52 GMT, (Don Pearce) wrote:

On Sun, 3 Dec 2017 11:43:02 -0600, Les Cargill
wrote:

Are you then saying that this is attributable to proximity effect?

I was... about a foot away from them, with an acoustic guitar.


Get yourself more than 6 feet away if you want to drop proximity
effect to a reasonable level.

d

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

I've made plots of the bass lift of a figure 8 out to 1 metre away.
You can see there is still plenty of lift going on at that distance

http://www.soundthoughts.co.uk/look/bass_lift.png

The vertical scale is decibels

d



That's substantial. Thanks, Don.

--
Les Cargill

[[email protected]]

On Monday, December 4, 2017 at 10:40:10 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 1:41:39 PM UTC-5, Don Pearce wrote:
On Sun, 03 Dec 2017 18:28:52 GMT, (Don Pearce) wrote:

On Sun, 3 Dec 2017 11:43:02 -0600, Les Cargill
wrote:

Are you then saying that this is attributable to proximity effect?

I was... about a foot away from them, with an acoustic guitar.


Get yourself more than 6 feet away if you want to drop proximity
effect to a reasonable level.

d

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

I've made plots of the bass lift of a figure 8 out to 1 metre away.
You can see there is still plenty of lift going on at that distance

http://www.soundthoughts.co.uk/look/bass_lift.png

The vertical scale is decibels

d

thats funny
Figure 8 at the top

refers to the mic pattern, not the number of the figure.

Pros?

Jack
m

[Scott Dorsey]

Les Cargill wrote:

I have no other ribbons to compare it to. Street
price is $90 these days. So why not?

The pattern is nice and tight and it picks up
very little room . It's also my first fig-8.
That's nice. It is rather dull-sounding.

By ribbon standards, the pattern is kind of sloppy. The thing about the
figure-8 is that it should have a really really tight null. You can put
an instrument in the null and it will almost completely disappear.

This mike does... not exactly have a good null, but it has a better null
than any cardioid mike will ever have, and for $90 that's useful.

It's dark and wooly. It sort-of works on acoustic
guitar if you want a ... vintage sort of sound. You
can add EQ to the upper few octaves to brighten it.
But it mainly sounds muddy on my dreadnoughts. Perhaps
on a parlor?

There's really no top octave at all in part because the ribbon is too heavy
and in part because the magnet assembly is too big (and in part because the
transformer is hard to build).

If you put it into a higher impedance input, you might be able to get a little
of that top end back, but it's never going to have the detailed and clean
top end of a Royer or an RCA BK-11. But for $90 it's okay.

If you're close-miking a guitar and the mike is too dull, move the mike
farther up the neck. Maybe even up to fret ten or so.

I suspect the convolution kernel plus the ECM8000 will prove
more valuable than the mic itself over time - just throw the ECM8000
on something, then "I wonder what that would sound like..." and
presto. Fortunately, it comes with a nice case so it can rest quietly
on the shelf fully protected.

The most useful thing about the microphone is the pattern. Using an ECM8000
with fancy equalization might make it sound the same on-axis, but that's not
the useful thing about the mike.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."