[Ty Ford]

Okay, so I had too much coffee yesterday and got a little carried away in the
studio. I created sort of a "Gothic Archies" version of "Things We Said
Today."

I used the Neumann D-01 on vocals, the right channel acoustic guitar backing
track and on the guitar solo. I ran the solo through an amp simulator plugin.
Hard to believe that's my Martin.

The left channel backing guitar track is my Martin's K&K Pure Western Mini
through an amp simulation plugin. The stabbing electric guitar is my Tele
though another amp plugin. Bass and drums will follow.

After playing it for some folks, who agreed that it was strange, but a good
strange, they asked how I got it to sound so clean.

I was on the Neumann site and noticed that they say the A/D converter in the
D-01 is 28-bit. I'm wondering if it's 32-bit, but not completely used or if
there are 28-bit converters. Everything I've recorded so far with the D-01
has been VERY clean unless I tweek the compressor and/or limiter software
past the normal amount.

Interestingly, the "cleanth" of the piece remains intact, even with the two
dirtied up guitar tracks.

http://idisk.mac.com/tyreeford-Publi...d%20Mutant.mp3

Do you know of anyone working the Acoustic-Goth category yet?

Regards,

Ty Ford


--Audio Equipment Reviews Audio Production Services
Acting and Voiceover Demos http://www.tyford.com
Guitar player?:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWaPRHMGhGA

[dwgriffi]

On Jan 1, 8:44*am, Ty Ford wrote:

I was on the Neumann site and noticed that they say the A/D converter in the
D-01 is 28-bit. I'm wondering if it's 32-bit, but not completely used or if
there are 28-bit converters. Everything I've recorded so far with the D-01
has been VERY clean unless I tweek the compressor and/or limiter software
past the normal amount.

Interestingly, the "cleanth" of the piece remains intact, even with the two
dirtied up guitar tracks.


Don't let the 16 bit brigade see this post. : )

[Randy Yates]

dwgriffi writes:

On Jan 1, 8:44*am, Ty Ford wrote:

I was on the Neumann site and noticed that they say the A/D converter in the
D-01 is 28-bit. I'm wondering if it's 32-bit, but not completely used or if
there are 28-bit converters. Everything I've recorded so far with the D-01
has been VERY clean unless I tweek the compressor and/or limiter software
past the normal amount.

Interestingly, the "cleanth" of the piece remains intact, even with the two
dirtied up guitar tracks.


Don't let the 16 bit brigade see this post. : )

Sure, they have 28 bit converters. Sure. They're cryogenically cooled,
but they do exist.

Perhaps the microphones have a tiny cooler inside?
--
% Randy Yates % "She tells me that she likes me very much,
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % but when I try to touch, she makes it
%%% 919-577-9882 % all too clear."
%%%% % 'Yours Truly, 2095', *Time*, ELO
http://www.digitalsignallabs.com

[Randy Yates]

Ty Ford writes:
[...]
I was on the Neumann site and noticed that they say the A/D converter in the
D-01 is 28-bit.

If you're talking about this page:

http://www.neumann.com/?lang=en&id=c..._descriptio n

then they say no such thing. They say the internal digital signal is 28
bits, which is not the same as saying the A/D is 28 bits. They probably
mean they're using a 28-bit wide digital bus.

Do the math: 28 bits == 168 dB dynamic range, and yet they say in the
very same sentence that the signal has a 130 dB dynamic range.

But I'd be very careful about believing these numbers. They also say in
an earlier section that current delta sigma converters have a dynamic
range of "115 to 120 dB, for a theoretical word length of 24 bits." Let
me get out my calculator: 24 * 6 = 144. What happened to the other 24
dB?
--
% Randy Yates % "How's life on earth?
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % ... What is it worth?"
%%% 919-577-9882 % 'Mission (A World Record)',
%%%% % *A New World Record*, ELO
http://www.digitalsignallabs.com

[Arny Krueger]

"Ty Ford" wrote in message
al.NET

I was on the Neumann site and noticed that they say the
A/D converter in the D-01 is 28-bit. I'm wondering if
it's 32-bit, but not completely used or if there are
28-bit converters. Everything I've recorded so far with
the D-01 has been VERY clean unless I tweek the
compressor and/or limiter software past the normal
amount.

The claim that a non-cryogenic ADC has 28 bit performance (as opposed to a
28 bit data path) is exceptional.

An acoustic dynamic range experiment, such as recording a loud sound and
then putting the mic into a very quiet place, then documenting this with a
32 bit floating point wave file, would serve to illustrate something useful
about what's really going on.

The recording that was provided is very nice, but very nice recordings have
been made with systems with as little as 60 dB dynamic range.

[Ron Capik]

Randy Yates wrote:

dwgriffi writes:

On Jan 1, 8:44 am, Ty Ford wrote:

I was on the Neumann site and noticed that they say the A/D converter in the
D-01 is 28-bit. I'm wondering if it's 32-bit, but not completely used or if
there are 28-bit converters. Everything I've recorded so far with the D-01
has been VERY clean unless I tweek the compressor and/or limiter software
past the normal amount.

Interestingly, the "cleanth" of the piece remains intact, even with the two
dirtied up guitar tracks.


Don't let the 16 bit brigade see this post. : )

Sure, they have 28 bit converters. Sure. They're cryogenically cooled,
but they do exist.

Perhaps the microphones have a tiny cooler inside?
--
% Randy Yates % "She tells me that she likes me very much,

Acoustic goth and microphones with tiny
coolers somehow evokes the vision of a
bunch of Maxwell's demons in the deep
recesses of some FET kicking back a
few brews. G


Later...

Ron Capik
--

[Mike Rivers]

Soundhaspriority wrote:

There are three up-front arguments as to why more than 20 actual bits
cannot be achieved:

1. Thermal noise that is unavoidably tied to the temperature of the
converter, usually room temperature or above.
2. Thermal noise caused by Brownian Motion, ie., air molecules individually
impacting the diaphragm.
3. The range of voltages required. Suppose the smallest line level
amplitiude of interest is 10 microvolts. From that reference, an SPL 130 dB
greater than that would be 10^8 volts, 100,000 volts. This is not practical!

Nevertheless, Neumann AG are respectable. They may have succeeded in
operating part of the conversion chain at enhanced resolution, even if it's
lost afterwards.

Perhaps the engineers got a little overenthusiastic explaining it
to the marketing people. Perhaps in some limited way, it exhibits a few of
the characteristics of a higher bit system, just the way a lossy codec can
be measured to have low distortion.

It's a scaling system. A very simplistic explanation is that it's sort
of like Sony's Super Bit Mapping. When the level gets too low to get
good resolution with the "high level" converters, it adds gain and
switches to the "low level" converters. Then it puts it all back
together to achieve the full dynamic range. Whether it's actually 28
bits from highest to lowest level, or if it's a 20 bit converter and an
8 bit convert, I'm not sure. That's up to the marketing department. G



--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[Geoff]

Ty Ford wrote:

a good strange, they asked how I got it to sound so clean.

I was on the Neumann site and noticed that they say the A/D converter
in the D-01 is 28-bit. I'm wondering if it's 32-bit,

Oh my god. 28 bits, 32 bits.... Damn, I need a 64 bit converter.

Would be nice if there was a 'real' 24 bit converter in the world, but then
it would have to be a very cold place.


geoff

[Geoff]

Soundhaspriority wrote:
A few years back, Sennheiser was working on a lav that used a fiber
optic. Ever hear what happened to that?

They couldn't get the water to go down the tube when flushed....

geoff

PS, fibre/wire, a mere detail - just a transport mechnaism. I suspect the
fibre kept fracturing so they gave up.

[Chris Hornbeck]

On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:10:05 GMT, Ron Capik
wrote:

Acoustic goth and microphones with tiny
coolers somehow evokes the vision of a
bunch of Maxwell's demons in the deep
recesses of some FET kicking back a
few brews. G

Yeah, I played with those guys. They fired me for something
or other - I can't remembeer.

WRT to the track: I'm really growing to like the vocals.
Who'd thunk it? (pickin' is great - natch).


Much thanks, as always,
Chris Hornbeck

[Richard Crowley]

"Randy Yates" wrote ...
Perhaps the microphones have a tiny cooler inside?

"When you decide to have a respectful conversation free of
invective and satire, I will discuss this with you." - Randy Yates

[Reinhard Zwirner]

Soundhaspriority schrieb:

....
A few years back, Sennheiser was working on a lav that used a fiber optic.
Ever hear what happened to that?

http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/home_en.nsf/root/professional_wired-microphones_industry-microphones_500488

HTH

Reinhard

[Reinhard Zwirner]

Geoff schrieb:

Soundhaspriority wrote:
A few years back, Sennheiser was working on a lav that used a fiber
optic. Ever hear what happened to that?

They couldn't get the water to go down the tube when flushed....

geoff

PS, fibre/wire, a mere detail - just a transport mechnaism. I suspect the
fibre kept fracturing so they gave up.

http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/home_en.nsf/root/professional_wired-microphones_industry-microphones_500488

HTH

Reinhard

[Dieter Michel]

Hi Mike and all,

It's a scaling system. A very simplistic explanation is that it's sort
of like Sony's Super Bit Mapping. When the level gets too low to get
good resolution with the "high level" converters, it adds gain and
switches to the "low level" converters. Then it puts it all back
together to achieve the full dynamic range.

yes, it's similar to that and uses two converters at different gains.
It only differs in that it does not hard-switch between converters but
uses an nonlinear (compressor-like) function to distribute the input signal
to the two converters with a reduced dynamic range for the conversion process
and combine them again later for generating the digital signal.

The process is described in detail in:
http://www.neumann.com/download.php?...d=lect0042.PDF

Best regards

Dieter Michel

[Ty Ford]

On Thu, 1 Jan 2009 13:38:43 -0500, dwgriffi wrote
(in article
):

On Jan 1, 8:44*am, Ty Ford wrote:

I was on the Neumann site and noticed that they say the A/D converter in the
D-01 is 28-bit. I'm wondering if it's 32-bit, but not completely used or if
there are 28-bit converters. Everything I've recorded so far with the D-01
has been VERY clean unless I tweek the compressor and/or limiter software
past the normal amount.

Interestingly, the "cleanth" of the piece remains intact, even with the two
dirtied up guitar tracks.


Don't let the 16 bit brigade see this post. : )

DW,

right on. I expect this to cause some chatter. bottom line. the mic makes
some VERY nice recordings.

Regards,

Ty (the provocateur) Ford


--Audio Equipment Reviews Audio Production Services
Acting and Voiceover Demos http://www.tyford.com
Guitar player?:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWaPRHMGhGA

[Scott Dorsey]

In article ,
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Randy Yates" wrote ...
Perhaps the microphones have a tiny cooler inside?

"When you decide to have a respectful conversation free of
invective and satire, I will discuss this with you." - Randy Yates

Hey, don't put down tiny coolers. Okay, it turned out to be a bad
idea with the Sony 800G... but it DOES reduce the noise floor on the 800G
in the short term.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Richard Crowley]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Randy Yates" wrote ...
Perhaps the microphones have a tiny cooler inside?

"When you decide to have a respectful conversation free of
invective and satire, I will discuss this with you." - Randy Yates

Hey, don't put down tiny coolers. Okay, it turned out to be a bad
idea with the Sony 800G... but it DOES reduce the noise floor on the 800G
in the short term.

The contraption on the 800G is there to conduct the heat
away from the firebottle, isn't it? Hardly cryogenic. :-)

[Scott Dorsey]

Richard Crowley wrote:
"Scott Dorsey" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Randy Yates" wrote ...
Perhaps the microphones have a tiny cooler inside?

"When you decide to have a respectful conversation free of
invective and satire, I will discuss this with you." - Randy Yates

Hey, don't put down tiny coolers. Okay, it turned out to be a bad
idea with the Sony 800G... but it DOES reduce the noise floor on the 800G
in the short term.

The contraption on the 800G is there to conduct the heat
away from the firebottle, isn't it? Hardly cryogenic. :-)

No, but the idea is the same, to get the operating temperature of the tube
way down so that the thermal noise drops.

And it does, except it turns out the tubes get some kind of contamination
issue that causes them to become prematurely noisy. If you take the tubes
out and run them in a table radio for a few hours at a nice hot temperature,
they go back to normal.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Karl Uppiano[_2_]]

"Geoff" wrote in message
...
Ty Ford wrote:

a good strange, they asked how I got it to sound so clean.

I was on the Neumann site and noticed that they say the A/D converter
in the D-01 is 28-bit. I'm wondering if it's 32-bit,

Oh my god. 28 bits, 32 bits.... Damn, I need a 64 bit converter.

Would be nice if there was a 'real' 24 bit converter in the world, but
then it would have to be a very cold place.

The marketing people just keep trying to rewrite the laws of physics. A Burr
Brown salesman I used to know called everything beyond 14 "marketing
bits" -- and he was referring to their own 16 bit converters. The LSBs
weren't monotonic, meaning that not only did they not encode linearly, but
successive binary codes could be out of order relative to an analog ramp!
That was in the days of SAR parallel converters. Modern sigma-delta units
can do better, but thermal effects tend to dominate in the 20-24 bit range
in any event. I guess you could say they were self-dithering in that sense,
because I doubt you'll ever see anything but noise encoded in the five or
six LSBs.

[Joe Kotroczo]

On 1/01/09 20:40, in article ,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:

"Ty Ford" wrote in message
al.NET

I was on the Neumann site and noticed that they say the
A/D converter in the D-01 is 28-bit. I'm wondering if
it's 32-bit, but not completely used or if there are
28-bit converters. Everything I've recorded so far with
the D-01 has been VERY clean unless I tweek the
compressor and/or limiter software past the normal
amount.

The claim that a non-cryogenic ADC has 28 bit performance (as opposed to a
28 bit data path) is exceptional.

http://www.stagetec.com/stagetec/e_truematch.htm

"TrueMatch® Reference Microphone Converter * Stage Tec¹s high-end A/D
converter for accurate and optimum sound imaging features an excellent
28-bit resolution and a dynamic range of 153 dB (A) with sample rates of up
to 96 KHz (version-dependent)."

The brochure has graphs etc.

http://www.stagetec.com/stagetec/tru...c-en-lores.pdf


--
Joe Kotroczo

[Joe Kotroczo]

On 2/01/09 12:20, in article , "Dieter
Michel" wrote:

Hi Mike and all,

It's a scaling system. A very simplistic explanation is that it's sort
of like Sony's Super Bit Mapping. When the level gets too low to get
good resolution with the "high level" converters, it adds gain and
switches to the "low level" converters. Then it puts it all back
together to achieve the full dynamic range.

yes, it's similar to that and uses two converters at different gains.
It only differs in that it does not hard-switch between converters but
uses an nonlinear (compressor-like) function to distribute the input signal
to the two converters with a reduced dynamic range for the conversion process
and combine them again later for generating the digital signal.

The process is described in detail in:
http://www.neumann.com/download.php?...d=lect0042.PDF

Did Neumann licence that from Stagetec?

Their concept sounds more or less the same:

"Stage TecŒs patented TrueMatch A/D-converter technology is based on a
Delta-Sigma conversion method including 128 times oversampling. It has been
deployed successfully in Stage TecŒs CANTUS and NEXUS products since 1995
and is now available for the TrueMatch RMC, too.
With the TrueMatch system, the analog input signal is fed to multiple
converters of different sensitivities. However, unlike the gain-ranging
method where converter operation depends on the input level, a DSP
permanently monitors the converter outputs and traces and eliminates any
conversion errors. More than 45 parameters are considered in this process.
First-class analog circuit design and state-of-the-art DSP technology
produce significant improvements compared to conventional 24-bit
converters."

http://www.stagetec.com/stagetec/e_t...ch_konzept.htm


--
Joe Kotroczo

[Scott Dorsey]

Joe Kotroczo wrote:
On 2/01/09 12:20, in article , "Dieter
Michel" wrote:


The process is described in detail in:
http://www.neumann.com/download.php?...d=lect0042.PDF

Did Neumann licence that from Stagetec?

Their concept sounds more or less the same:

"Stage TecŒs patented TrueMatch A/D-converter technology is based on a
Delta-Sigma conversion method including 128 times oversampling. It has been
deployed successfully in Stage TecŒs CANTUS and NEXUS products since 1995
and is now available for the TrueMatch RMC, too.

The process has been used since the 1960s, back when it was called the
"dual ladder" configuration. Most of the early 20-bit converters in the
early nineties used that method.

It works well... but if the noise floor (or any part of the noise floor)
is higher than the 28th bit, it ain't really a 28 bit converter.
--scott

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

[Mike Rivers]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

The process has been used since the 1960s, back when it was called the
"dual ladder" configuration. Most of the early 20-bit converters in the
early nineties used that method.

Didn't 3M have an analog recorder with a system like that? It used four
tracks with more gain on one pair than the other to keep the signal
within the dynamic range of the tape. Dynatrack?



--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[Scott Dorsey]

Mike Rivers wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

The process has been used since the 1960s, back when it was called the
"dual ladder" configuration. Most of the early 20-bit converters in the
early nineties used that method.

Didn't 3M have an analog recorder with a system like that? It used four
tracks with more gain on one pair than the other to keep the signal
within the dynamic range of the tape. Dynatrack?

Yes, back in the seventies there were a couple attempts to increase
dynamic range with weird formats. Dynatrack was one of them, and a
couple others were FM schemes. I had forgotten all about that stuff.
--scott

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

[Ty Ford]

On Sat, 3 Jan 2009 08:06:24 -0500, Scott Dorsey wrote
(in article ):

Mike Rivers wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

The process has been used since the 1960s, back when it was called the
"dual ladder" configuration. Most of the early 20-bit converters in the
early nineties used that method.

Didn't 3M have an analog recorder with a system like that? It used four
tracks with more gain on one pair than the other to keep the signal
within the dynamic range of the tape. Dynatrack?

Yes, back in the seventies there were a couple attempts to increase
dynamic range with weird formats. Dynatrack was one of them, and a
couple others were FM schemes. I had forgotten all about that stuff.
--scott



Bottom Line: It's a very nice sounding mic that's relatively unclippable
(unless you're relatively clueless) with a lot of other DSP facility. Also,
you're getting a mic with 15 patterns. an input strip with a high pass
filter, compressor, limiter and polarity switch.

Regardless of the strip, I'm impressed with what it captures.

Regards,

Ty Ford


--Audio Equipment Reviews Audio Production Services
Acting and Voiceover Demos http://www.tyford.com
Guitar player?:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWaPRHMGhGA

[dwgriffi]

On Jan 3, 9:56*am, Ty Ford wrote:


Regardless of the strip, I'm impressed with what it captures.

Ty, it's a strictly digital output, right?

[Ty Ford]

On Sat, 3 Jan 2009 11:49:40 -0500, dwgriffi wrote
(in article
):

On Jan 3, 9:56*am, Ty Ford wrote:


Regardless of the strip, I'm impressed with what it captures.

Ty, it's a strictly digital output, right?

dw,

Yes. In my case, AES out and baluns'd down to an RCA connector and going into
my DIGI 003's S/PDIF port.

Regards,

Ty Ford

--Audio Equipment Reviews Audio Production Services
Acting and Voiceover Demos http://www.tyford.com
Guitar player?:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWaPRHMGhGA

[Carey Carlan]

Ty Ford wrote in
al.NET:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2009 11:49:40 -0500, dwgriffi wrote
(in article
):

On Jan 3, 9:56*am, Ty Ford wrote:


Regardless of the strip, I'm impressed with what it captures.

Ty, it's a strictly digital output, right?

dw,

Yes. In my case, AES out and baluns'd down to an RCA connector and
going into my DIGI 003's S/PDIF port.

Is there any solution for word clock?

How would you sync a stereo pair?

[Ty Ford]

On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 14:44:36 -0500, Carey Carlan wrote
(in article ):

Ty Ford wrote in
al.NET:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2009 11:49:40 -0500, dwgriffi wrote
(in article
):

On Jan 3, 9:56*am, Ty Ford wrote:


Regardless of the strip, I'm impressed with what it captures.

Ty, it's a strictly digital output, right?

dw,

Yes. In my case, AES out and baluns'd down to an RCA connector and
going into my DIGI 003's S/PDIF port.

Is there any solution for word clock?

How would you sync a stereo pair?

Hi Carey,

The DMI-2 interface box accommodates two mics and has WC in and out.

Regards,

Ty Ford


--Audio Equipment Reviews Audio Production Services
Acting and Voiceover Demos http://www.tyford.com
Guitar player?:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWaPRHMGhGA