Sixnon

I'd have to concur. I have both the Zoom F8 and a Rodecaster, and would choose the latter certainly for dedicated podcast work.

Did the trick, thank you Vincent

Excellent Vincent, thank you. Seems like most of the internets are conducted on the facebooks these days! Makes things difficult for those who don't use 'em! Now that i see that solution I recall reading something very similar for Sound Devices machines recently.

My zoom F8 is requiring date/time setting upon each startup. I assume it is an internal battery which requires replacement, but I've yet to find any detail in any literature. Does anyone have a suggestion or experience of this? I've been in touch with Zoom and am awaiting a response.

I suggested this concern regarding capsule when it was announced (admittedly more in relation to price than sound) so am glad to hear some news of sound.

John mentioned quite a few comparisons to Tetramic.

Also thanks y gracias to John and Ramallo, good to hear of some detailed hands on experience. The local Sennheiser representative couldn't event tell me the size of the capsules when it was first released, so it didn't seem like something which was being very actively marketed..I'll be very interested to hear how the Rode offerings stack up.

Any indications that the capacity to connect the usb keyboard will be limited to through the FRC-8? I imagine a firmware update will come with the unit to make it function and I wonder if we will be able to connect a keyboard directly..

Interested to hear your thoughts Seth. Let us know what you think apropos ease of capture/post in comparison to M/S. As I've said earlier, I'm interested in this mic and others like it outside the context of VR.

I calculated based on the recording hacks i.e. US rrp and the rrp for the Ambeo in Australia (I couldn't find a local price for e914 in my initial searches) and it works out to about $1200 AUD more than four e914's. I appreciate that the European retail of the Ambeo is less. There it is in their ad copy.. Does raise the question of where to place it in VR situations, as Jose mentioned.

No, haven't tried it. Audeze have pricing information but the Australian distributor of the impression that it's not even in production as yet. I remain interested as at least it appears to be an innovation. I know that planar magnetic contact systems are very good, so am intrigued to see how this sounds. You're out of luck viz size as the capsule, according to the what promotional material exists, is 100mm! No sample recordings that I know of, it strikes me as strange that these manufacturers do not make more effort in this regard. If one is forking over 3-4k for a mic, knowing a little how it sounds quite important, no?

Yes, thanks Constantin, I could not find reference to that capsule elsewhere on other mics in my initial search. Now that I see the information on the recording hack page that Ramallo linked to, I see it's a 14mm capsule. When I asked the local retailer details of the capsule "is it something like a 20mm small condenser capsule?" "yeah something around that" was the response. Safe to say there's nothing really innovative here and (given that the RRP of the e914 is less than $400) pricing is more reflective of market fashion than technological merit? Jose did you have any chance to work with the Audeze Tetrahedral you mentioned when I raised the subject of the Sennheiser "VR" mic some months back?

This is confirmed somewhere Ramallo? I was unable to glean any information on capsules from the company or the retailer here where the Ambeo is in "preorder" status with a RRP of around $3300 AUD. Price seems very inflated if these are the capsules used. There's remarkably little information, samples etc for a product in production and shipping.

http://www.rode.com/blog/all/freedman-electronics-purchases-soundfield No doubt a response to this kind of development http://en-uk.sennheiser.com/microphone-3d-audio-ambeo-vr-mic in the ambisonic realm.

I second that, great knobs that fit snugly, quality of workmanship good and they arrived hassle free and with alacrity in Australia from Spain!

now that right there is a wonderful analogy!

No it did not, I asked the same question, and made the same observation, it does indeed seem to defeat the purpose..it's simply channel ganging as far as I'm aware...but would be glad to be proved wrong. I thought I had read in preliminary promotional material that the -12db was to be the case.

Sorry to hear of that Tony, that's a lot of gear! There's a couple of 788's and a CL-9 for sale on Australian eBay at the moment, but I imagine you are keeping your eye out there.

Regarding my suggestion of a DC-DC converter I've just come across this from Mr Wexler in another thread [I can't work out how to quote directly from another thread using this forum software, but it's this one. http://jwsoundgroup.net/index.php?/topic/12538-simon-b-and-stuarts-new-minirackcart-build/&page=2 Whilst I have heard no noise from my setup, Jeff obviously has a world more experience than me in these matters, and I thought it useful to add to this thread.

i was expecting a thread about the recording of supersonic jets! I'd be interested to know the dB reduction level for hay bales [the traditional generator noise reduction material of my youth]. There is new suggestion in research circles that as much as 30% of heart disease is caused by noise pollution...

Thanks for such a detailed response José. I realised as I sent that last response that I was being a little simplistic. I was aware of the Brahma mics, but they hardly seemed mass market and have been reviewed well enough, but as having significant issues which I guess is understandable given the humble manufacturing process...and for that reason expressed surprise that there hadn't been more mass market appeal for this kind of product. I was aware of 3dio's binaural product, not so that they had branched out with the free space omni...which looks a lot like the setup of the Chris Milk head. Again, I had seen that Beck project a few years back, but that kind of format didn't seem to gain too much mass market appeal. The offerings in your post suggest that in fact there is a push to the market place in this context..and it seems to be all kicking off this year with some very recent product announcements. I'm very interested to hear of the performance of the planar magnetic tetrahedral mic from Audeze when it lands. One of my points regarding the technology is that it's a repackaging of a fairly old format. I know some here love Ambisonics, some hate it. Dysonic have taken a different direction, but frankly I was underwhelmed by their example video...perhaps one needs the motion tracking hardware for it to make sense? I was looking at this kind of tech 6 or 7 years or so ago for a project intending to map Indigenous song cycles in a cartographic space, and it's certainly progressed...I thought it would have happened before now. At the time I was looking at the likes of DPA's 5.1 array of capsules as a most efficient setup for capturing that audio in rugged country. In fact the VR doesn't interest me that much, but am interested in how the technology could be brought to sound capture for it's own sake..ie aside from video capture. That being said the ozo does look pretty impressive! Again, I'm grateful for your detailed response José, and if you can think of any further reading around that particular niche of the audio world, I'd be appreciative if you could share it.

I guess we'll wait and see. It just seemed a strange choice to introduce as groundbreaking. Given all of the interest in VR, however, I'm surprised there's not been more products of this nature in the last few years.

Does anyone have any further information regarding this mic? Images from CES suggest an 4 capsule ambisonic setup, but marketing material from Sennheiser mentions a 9.1 format in the context of "a groundbreaking technology that promises the ultimate in audio capture and reproduction."

I've no doubt you are correct, and it would certainly be more elegant..but the current draw on the one I use must be negligible, as even with a voltage display I can't really see an efficiency loss of more than 5% in real world usage. That's by no means extensively tested, just my feeling about usage times I'm accustomed to.

for those without a regulated supply [i have a Remote Audio BDS for example] an option is to buy a dc-dc step-down transformer, ensure that the output voltage is set to less than 16v, and wire it into your supply to the zoom. They can be purchased for $6 dollars or so, and one can build them into a box for about the same again.