greenmachine

1) There's 'only' PCM (1411kbps, 44.1kHz, 16bit), Hi-SP (Atrac3+ compressed at 256kbps) and Hi-LP (A3+ @ 64kbps) for recording. 2) It's not perfectly centered, but the NH700 for example has one. Take a look around in the equipment browser. 3) Depends on the recording mode with PCM usually not significantly faster than ~1.5x realtime, Hi-SP about 5x faster than PCM, Hi-LP about 20x faster than PCM.

1) SS 3.2 and 3.3 both have worked flawlessly for uploading/conversion for me so far. Download links can be found in the software section of the forums. All downloads are free of charge. 2) Recordings from line- and mic-in both can be uploaded and converted. Optical-in recordings can be uploaded but not converted with SS. We have a free software called 'Himdrenderer' for that. Downloaded tracks via USB are protected and can't be re-uploaded. 3) Most of the time it's either mic-in low sensitivity or line-in with battery box. You need a battery box to provide the mics the required bias voltage, which is absent at the line-in and has to be supplied externally via battery box. With the average electret mic you most propably need to record loud rock concerts via BB/line-in for best results. With very low sensitive mics the mic-in might serve you well for a wide variety of situations. The built-in mic preamp preampifies the signal and overloads significantly sooner than ther line-in. There are also cheap tricks like the mics connected to the headphone attenuator connected to mic-in, but this usually gives inferior results at high SPLs than recording via line-in. 4) All you need is a standard USB cable and either SS 3.2 or 3.3. Other methods should only be used if the regular transfer fails.

Mono mics might be suited for close miking applications like interviews, single instruments but not great for far miking. Everything's flat and one-dimensinal. There's no life.

I tend to listen to this stream frequently: http://www.epitonic.com/radio.wax?error_pa...onic+radio.y=37

both

You should also mention what kind of headphones you use. Some might sound pleasing to your ears without EQ, the majority propably won't and require individual corrections.

The tinny sound is a sign of a non-fitting air-seal, which can't be easily compensated by equalization. Even if you could, the EQ's lowest frequency of 100 Hz is pretty useless, something in the 60 Hz range would have been much better imo.

...which is quite impressive considering its optimisation for low power requirements.

The signal wouldn't be significantly stronger - it's a powered but not preamplified mic. For regular recordings you'd need either a MD recorder with mic-in, an external preamplifier (additional bulk), or a preamplified mic, which is rare and hard to find. It's propably best to upgrade to a MD with mic-in, even if it's not the latest model.

I guess you're planning to use cardioids in xy-configuration? If you're certain about fixing the mics in a housing without any considerable distance in between - which i usually don't recommend - i'd go for d) with a highpass set somewhere below 20Hz (capacitor value at least 1uF). With a built-in power supply you can either use the mic- or line-in of your recorder, depending on the situation. A good preamp is more or less difficult to build/find and not really required if your recorder has a built-in pre or you plan to record exclusively at high SPLs.

You should discern between a headphones mix, which should require little to no processing apart from some gentle volume corrections if using the 'binaural' or 'hrtf' mic placement - and a loudspeaker mix, which might require different mic placement, equalization, stereo-, delay- and other effects to sound good. It's very hard, if not impossible to make it pleasantly sounding for both loudspeaker and headphone playback.

From the 'Effects' -> 'Amplitude' menu you can choose 'Pan/Expand...' Raise the 'Stereo Expand' bar by a desired amount for the effect. Be careful not to over-process your recording. Through headphones the effect usually sounds artificial - for a headphones mix the recording should usually be left 'as is'. [attachmentid=1059][attachmentid=1060]

You might as well give a less expensive model a try or build it yourself. The bias voltage is provided by the recorder from the mic-in. When recording directly to line-in, a battery box is needed for powering the mics. Line-in recording is suggested if you record at very high sound pressure levels.

While having the full voltage at the mics would be theoretically ideal, practically speaking, without bias resistor the output impedance and channel separation would be close to zero. A bias resistor is unavoidable. I had best results with resistors in the recommended 2-10kOhm range, anything significantly below or above degrades signal quantity and quality. Could you explain your thoughts behind your statement?

A440, i think you're confusing normalizing, which is basically just a precise, automated way of finding the peak levels and amplifying the whole thing to a different peak level - it doesn't mess with dynamics at all - with (hard) limiting, which is a kind of dynamics processing and can be helpful to even occasional peaks out. Whatever you do, always keep the original.

Happy birthday to bug80. After viewing your profile, i'm listening to the samples on your band's page. I didn't know you're a musician.

The Auris are fixed-charge back plate permanently polarized condenser (=electret) microphones and propably using the same basic panasonic omni mic caps as other manufacturers use at a more reasonable price. That said, they should perform excellent as far as you pay attention to your recording technique, which is at least as important as the equipment itself. HRTF is an acronym for Head-Related Transfer Function, which means that you use a head-like sphere between the mics to simiulate the way humans hear. Even if you don't use a baffle in between, you should always give your mics ~6-8 inches distance between each other (the average distance of human ears). I don't know about a particular site which discusses this technique in depth, but i know that 'sonic studios' is highly praising it. Googling for some significant keywords might help to get more insight. In this example recording i've used my self-built microphone equipment (http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=11254), which should perform pretty similar to other 'binaural' mic setups, together with a NH700 HiMD. I've recorded about 10 feet away from the actors, the trumpet slightly to the left - the piano to the right in an old church. I consider myself as an occasional musician (drums mostly), would like to do it more often, but you know how hard it is to find the right people. In this recording my role was of a totally passive nature.

Find the bug: [attachmentid=1051]

Place a dummy head a few feet away from the instruments and equip it with a pair of separable omnidirectional 'binaural' microphones for most realistic results. With this technique you'll record much like what the audience would perceive. A recent trumpet / piano recording of mine, using this (HRTF) technique: (listen with hedphones) http://forums.minidisc.org/gallery/1120229...42_10524364.mp3

I'm afraid your suggestion wouldn't work, but if you would use A=gnd B+C=positive (outer shell=positive, needs to be isolated properly!) you would basically have a 2-wire source follower connection, But with a parallel 4k resistor (RL) at the output, which can't be removed and works like an attenuator. Unlike the conventional 2-wire hookup, there's no preamplification in this mode, which makes it less sensitive, RL works as an additional attenuator. The source follower connection usually allows for higher SPLs, but attenuation of the microphone output (which can't be removed in this case) in theory degrades the signal to noise ratio. The lower output level might help to avoid preamp overload though. Although this particular capsule seemingly is intended for 3- wire connection, you might want to give it a try.

3 wire connection (FET connected as source follower): A=audio out B=ground C=Vcc (power supply +) --------------------------------------------- Conventional 2 wire connection (compatible with plug-in power, but distorts at moderate SPLs): C=positive (audio out + plug in power) A+B=ground

I'd love to hear a sample.

Makes me wonder what i would prefer - high quality mono or low quality stereo?

How about "nobody-needs-lossy-compression-at-such-a-high-bitrate-since-other-modern-codecs-can-be-transparent-at-half-that-bitrate" ?

If someone will follow these instructions and make it publicly available, propably. By the way, its official name is SonicStage.