RockyJ

TV has 15575hz output, and I can pick it up with my mics built with unshielded cable.

what opamp did you use and can you give me the other design particulars.

I've been looking into homemade mic-preamp but found the choices of opamps, etc a little overwhelming. What did you come up with for the preamp. I bought one anyway but these electronic projects are interesting and I'd like to try a homemade one anyway.

I thought the same as you and decided to go line-in and use a preamp. I did a simple test. I plugged a simple 1/8 stereo plug into line-in and mic-in and recorded at mic high sensitivity and level max 30/30. I recorded in a room about 30 feet away from my computer and the tv was off and the lights were off just in case. I'm using the RH910 which is probably identical in these respects. viewing the wav file in my editor I see the line-in at about about -75db and mic-in at -43db. Here is a spectrum of the files. I notice the left and right aren't matched in mic in as well. RH910 my mic-in open circuit test file: [attachmentid=1490] RH910 my line-in open circuit test file: [attachmentid=1491]

Is thermal noise an issue with recording? After all we wear the mic next to our temple and often have the recorder in clothes pockets.

From what I can xlat you list s/n as 58db and 60db but the panasonic mics I got recently were spec'd out at 62db. I thought you use the panasonics. Anyway, good luck and thanks for your DIY.

Sounds great, I figured I'd be safe in my recording environment but I'm going to try again with the cheapo (but small) wires. Thanks for replies, I'll post again when I get these done.

well my first mic is rather ugly and the cabling is way too stiff, I'd say its 5mm judging from the 6mm mics. And my radio shack mini-jacks are huge and clunky. Anyway I can't find shielded cabling. Would the unshielded give me problems in a theatre setting where there shouldn't be much EM interference? The wires for something like cheap earbuds would be just right although they may develop continuity problems.

well I made the mic connections. I can't tell if my solder job got the cap too hot causing damage or not. How would you tell Also I couldn't find small dia shielded cable so I settled for a radio shack special. A 6' single core with shielding sold with alligator clips as a test cable. It is almost as thick as the 6mm mics so the soldering was that much harder to see. I'm not sure if I soldered the ground where it is touching the case, but I do hear crackling when I bend the cable so I don't know where I stand on that one. Anyone know for sure what would cause the crackling when the cable is flexed?

Do you have any suggestions on small diam shielded cable? I can't seem to find any, even at Radio Shack? And do you know where to get those lapel clips?

GM, thanks for the DIY. I just bought 4 61b's for $9 + shipping and need to get the other stuff somewhere. These have tabs, and I believe they are there to solder to to keep the heat down. Being a rather novice, do you think I'll do any damage with my 25w iron. I doubt I'll be soldering to those tiny tabs. I've soldered to my AIWA's and did no damage and the pellets were too hot to touch!! What d'ya think? I've got some small heat sinks that fell off my old sound card, so I'll clamp the pellets to those to help.

It sounds pretty much like the original. The singer did have a higher timbre then a lot of sopranos. The cardioids are advertised as 20-20k. I'll have to post some more louder stuff that isn't clipped. Also I need a remote so I can try and level the sound but I really think there will be no way except by dead reckoning and setting it at a best guess. I wish they would just have a little red light that flashed on clip. That would be better then those lame bars on the Sony. But I did get some Panasonic mics and will try your DIY. The 61B mics have little tabs sticking out, should I attempt to solder only to those in order to keep the heat down. I worry my soldering with my 25 watt iron may get it too hot.

I posted my first recording. Being newby my level was too high and I couldn't see the meter on my sony rh910

I've been doing some playing with it. I have a recording of the local College doing an Opera in their basement theater. I did some quick experimenting with its pickup of a sweep recording I made and notice it shows up at about 80hz and drops down about 10db at 2.6kh back up at 4kh and drops down at about 6.5k then fluctuates mostly downward but keeps up some vol all the way to 21kh. All of this is pretty unscientific and thrown together. My speakers and amp have a big influence on the results. I need a good pair to compare to for the best indication. The model number on the case is CM 18 WB but I couldn't find any specs on the web.

I wanted a starter mic to get the hang of my new recorder and play a bit before I bought a good one. I found an AIWA mic on ebay. You can try ebay and see if you can send a message to the seller to see if he has any more. Mine developed a hum and I had to do some resoldering (the case didn't have a good ground I believe). Otherwise it is just what it is. It seems to have a lot of self noise although I don't know how to measure that. The seller's ebay name is calvin829, and he calls it an AIWA Luxury stereo mic. Here's a review of another AIWA mic (not my model) if you can find one. http://www.minidisc.org/part_Recorders_Aiwa_notes.html I got mine for $1.04 plus about $6.00 shipping [attachmentid=1393]

I got the 14m gumstick and notice the unit is getting warmer recharging them then the recommended 10m Seeing that Sony never indicates in the manual that it is ok to use the larger cap battery, although I will use them I wonder now if it is a good idea to charge them in the machine.

I'm having a hard time getting off my idea of going to cardioids for acoustic music in halls, so I'll probably be the guinea pig since these reach to the 20h. Good idea on the clips but I usually will be facing the stage and I figured those would be the least problem area for body movement noise rather than shirts or lapels.

I'll come up with something better on the dynamics, after all I used two different levels and that is not good since I don't know what db's those levels are referenced to. I'm using aiwa stereo mic no model, I opened them and found the condensers number 'cm 18 wb'. I can't find specs on them on the web. the recorder is sony rh910. I'll be back someday not too far off with some more experiments.

now I'm looking at microphonemadness cardioids that reach 20-20k. Have you heard about those. I still think cardioids will be the way to go, but I'll probably end up having them both sooner or later.

I see where a lot of people purport to use low sens settings. One may want to look into this further for their mics. I did a quick test and will test again with better controls but the hi sens and lo sens have different results in quality. I did a recording with lo at 20/30 and hi at 14/30. It was an outside recording at night with low volume distance traffic hum. I increased the volume on the low sens by 10db and here is a view of each. as you can see the white noise is throughout the spectrum and it sounds very rumblely bassy, while the hi sens clip is brighter and doesn't show the white noise. hisens: [attachmentid=1338] losens: [attachmentid=1339]

It sounds great and encouraging for me, a newb. Although this post was 9 mon ago, if you see this, I'd like to know what mic you used. The low point at 2.47 shows pretty low dynamics so the mic noise appears to be not a problem with this mic and in this type of recording, which I'm interested in.

A440, the live recordings sub link to music doesn't work for me, it just sits there and eventually says it can't be displayed. The gallery section works but not the live recordings link. How is the economy model of core-sounds' cardioids? Have you heard?

I will be recording orchestra and unamped vocal recitals. Sometimes from 5 rows back sometimes from back row. Are the cardioids that noticeably 'tinny' as I have read or are they just not picking up the higher energy base from the sides of the theatre walls and such. Do they actually distort the sound? I'm wanting to talk myself into cardioids to minimize theatre sounds. In an amped environment the audience and bounce effect are overpowered but not so in acoustic settings, but I don't want to lose bass. and second question. Why would I need bass roll off in omnidirectional's. Can't I just edit the sound file in my Goldwave editor.

to elaborate, the thing can be rid of by entering an empty value in the registry. This is in my win98 and I am not sure where it goes in xp but this may work there also [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] "SsAAD.exe"="" If you can access the registry and navigate to this key then just enter the empty string for the value. I can attach a reg file to do it but I worry about those not familiar with this level of computer tweaking.

everytime I start SS, it inserts this program as a registry entry to run on startup. I don't care if this is vital to survival of mankind, an automatic program boot should be the option of the user, period, no if and or buts. Has anyone found a way to remove this permanent from a windows system? So far I seem to have defeated the invader by making the entry blank in the registry but keeping the key name. I'll post further if there is other interest. It may be necessary for some people but I only copy recorded wav files from md to the computer and nothing else and I haven't found it to affect this operation.