valdis

Nevermind, the mic input in mono, althought Vista and Audacity see it as stereo.

I had an old set of Koss Sparkplugs here and a pair of Panasonic electrets and tried to make some binaural mics. I cut the wires from the earplus, picked the left wire and soldered the two tiny wires to "left mic" (signal and ground), doing the same for the "right mic". I was able to mount these mics on the earplug facing outwards. This way I can wear them the same way as usual but as recording devices. The only recording machine I have at the moment with me is my laptop with Windows Vista (a Toshiba A200-221), which I used for testing. I connected the mics to the mic input, right clicked the volume icon, went to sound specs and confirmed the mic input was set to record in stereo. Then I used Windows Recorder and captured the sound of a shaking matchbox around my head. Listening to the audio file with my headphones, there isn't any channel separation, no binaural effect. What have I might done wrong?

Thanks for the heads-up Guitarfxr, I fixed it already. GM, thanks for your insight, you saved me some money. The solution would be to build a mic pre-amp but I'm a total noob and my gen physics classes were way back in the day. The is so much information out there that I end up not knowing where to start. I'll keep browsing this forum as usual to see if I meet someone in teh same situation. Cheers

Hello gents, I'd like to know if this minidisc is suitable for making binaural field recordings using electret microphones: The reason I'm asking is that I found a second-hand cheap one (20 euro). from a seller with good feedback, that seems to be in good condition. Should I make some specific questions to ascertain it's condition? I also have a Creative Zen Nano than has line-in recording capability at 160kbp/s. Should I build and amp instead or try this minidisc? http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sony_MZ-R70.html Thanks in advance for your help and sorry if this is in the wrong section, i'm just starting out.. Francisco

I've been told by another user that these soundblaster live soundcard's mic-in is mono... After reading the manual and googling, I still haven't figured out which one of those slots is the line-in...could you help me on this? Thank you for your time, Regards, Francisco

Well, this is my soundcard in the link below but to be honest I cant figure out if the mic-in is mono or not... http://us.creative.com/products/product.as...lSpecifications

No, the wires only touch the bits of solder of the capsule, it was just the angle of the shot. I was told it might also be a problem with my soundcards mic-in input so I jiggled the plug a bit and I got a bit of sound. At least I know its working but why do I get so little sound from one side? Is it possible the capsules are that much mis-matched? Another thing: My goal with these microphones is to make field recordings with a binaural effect, however, I was expecting a bigger separation between left and right channels like Ive heard in other amateur recordings. I put one mic in each corner of my desk and jiggled a box of matches near the left channel and then near the right channel while recording it. The sound came out "centered", not more to the right and then more to the left as I was expecting it. What am I doing wrong? Thanks again for your help, Regards, Francisco

First of all, let me say thank you for this tutorial. I had been planning to build one of these binaural mics for a while and this topic was all I need to get started! I already had here some screened cable with a female 3.5mm jack on one end and a male jack on the other, that I had been using as an extension cable for my headphones, all I needed was the mic capsules that I found in my local electronics shop. I proceeded to mount it as follow: 1. Pick one capsule and mark it as Left and mark the other one as Right. 1.1. Splitted the cable. 2. Solder the Red wire on the V+ spot of the right mic and the bare wire on grown spot. 3. Solder the Black wire and Bare wire to the corresponding spots of the left mic. 4. Plugged the assembly in the mic-in of my desktop's Creative Soundblaster Live sound card. Opened the corresponding software to monitor the captured sound. 5. Trouble: The mic only captured sound from the left side ("left" mic + black/bare wire) 6. I started to think there might have been a problem with the right mic so I desoldered the wires and soldered the right side wires to the "left" mic and the left wires to the "right" mic. 7. Once again, I only captured sound from the left side which lead me to conclude that both mics were functioning but that I was only getting sound from the left side cable. Here is a pick: Now, can someone try to explain why is this happening, please? Thanks in advance for your help, Kind regards, Francisco