"Harry Lavo" wrote in message
Over in alt.audio.pro.live-sound, a post was made by a
FOH engineer about Naiant mics, brought to his attention
by another sound man.
This is an example of how its possible for a person, filled with self-pity
because he's been held accountable for his own behavior, misinterprets
information offered in good faith:
Naiant mics are little known mics hand produced by a
studio owner in North Carolina, essentially by bundling a
standard electret capsule with circuitry that allows them
to be phantom-powered, and then the whole thing
encapsulated inside a conventional XLR connector. Moreover, he sells the
things for $22, about what the
capsule itself costs unless purchased in bulk.
Simply not true. The Panasonic capsules in question have been historically
available for from $2 to $5 each. The higher-priced (ca. $20) capsules are
probably those from Knowles, which are different products.
The word
has spread viral-like....I stumbled across them during
the late fall and bought four of the omnis (plus a
cardiod varient) for myself and my son just before
Christmas. A test recording of a grand piano showed the
omnis to have very acceptable sound when used as a close
mic (I didn't test their noise floor as a distance mic).
I've made microphones with these capsules over the past 20 years, and aside
from their well-known limitations, they can be used to make good-sounding
recordings.
When the subject came up in rec.audio.pro.live-sound,
Arny clearly had not heard of them, but he (probably
accurately) guessed they pretty much sounded like a
small-footprint version of the cheapo Beringher omni
measurement mics that he and Bob Morein and many others
use to good effect for some purposes. So far so good.
I've disassembled a Behringer ECM 8000, and found that they use an electret
capsule that is very similar to the Panasonic capsule, mentioned above. I've
compared both mics to B&K calibrated measurement mics, and found that over a
fairly wide frequency range any differences are within the calibration curve
of the B&K.
This morning Arny posted a post, somewhat dismissive in
tone, that showed he had scanned the web for articles
relating to modifications of electronics to use the
capsule with phantom power:
"Practical circuits for interfacing the Panasonic
capsules can be found all over the web - here are several:
http://sound.westhost.com/project93.htm
http://www.mp3forkidz.com/mic/
http://www.uneeda-audio.com/pzm/pzm_ch.htm
http://www.linkwitzlab.com/sys_test.htm#Mic
http://www.libinst.com/micassem.htm"
Some of these materials have been on the web for up to a decade or more.
So far so good....Arny has shown that the idea was not
unique to Naiant (although they seem to be the first to
have commercialized it for a truly low-cost mic by
eliminating any machining). But, and here is the kicker,
Arny didn't stop there. In fact before listing the above
articles he implies to being one of the founders of the
idea:
"These things are very old news to some of us - they are
just Panasonic 6mm mic capsules hooked up so that they
have balanced outputs and work off of phantom power. One
of the earliest published articles about the 6 mm
Panasonic capsules was written by a friend and I, and was
published in the Audio Amateur maybe 20 years or more
ago"
Simply the truth. A friend of mine (who was chased off of RAO by Alan
Derrida among others) and I *discovered* these mics in the Digi-Key catalog
way back when, ordered a few when we were ordering other parts from them,
and did some of the projects and tests that I meantioned above.
Note that the article is not available on the web.
Noe doubt a consequence of being so old.
Note also that Arny's wording doesn't *say* that the article
details a means of applying balanced phantom power to the
capsule. But it certainly implies it.
That would be one of Harry's mental flights of fancies. Note that I said
that the article we wrote was about the capsules. And, so it was.
I don't dismiss his claim...Arny is a well-known
scrounger of low-end approaches to audio, so coming up
with an el-cheapo mic certainly fit his MO. But, just
out of curiousity, does anybody here have access to old
Audio Amateur mags or a nearby technically-proficient
library that could determine whether the article exists,
and if it does, whether it bears directly on the issue of
phantom-powering the Panasonic capsule. I'd be
interested in knowing.
I'll cut to the chase, Harry. We didn't discuss phantom power in our old AA
article.
My suspicion is that Arny is once again reflexively
claiming credit by implication, after being surprised by
knowledge of a product that he didn't previously know
about.
That is just another one of Harry's flights of fancy. Selling mics built
into XLR plugs on eBay is nothing new. The Niant product is nothing that I
haven't known about for years.
Anyone?
Sorry Harry, but you've finally managed to at least gotten the most obvious
facts right, and screwed up badly whenever you departed from the facts that
were absolutely obvious and in your face.