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Werner Althaus

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Everything posted by Werner Althaus

  1. I suggest first and foremost to oppose anyone who's trying to "normalize" the situation in print, TV radio and the internet, it's not normal, it's unprecedented in a bad way. Then there are many things one might suggest or do, all constitutional, btw. Jill Stein is pursuing a recount and people are supporting the effort, all perfectly legal. Members of the electoral college could be persuaded to become "faithless electors", others suggest entire laundry lists on how to resist legally, Michael Moore and Robert Reich come to mind. I almost lost it a few days ago when Mark Shields on the PBS Newshour suggested that Dems should not adopt the Republican strategy of total obstructionism from back in 2009, it didn't work.......say what??? It worked perfectly for their twisted agenda, and it's exactly what Dems need to do, grow a set and start fighting. And since you mentioned the constitution, I'd suggest that anyone who took an oath to defend the constitution of the United States in any way take a hard look at what that means here and now. Does that answer your question?
  2. I wasn't going to comment any further but the "lets wait and see" rationale really bothers me. BTW, my favorite quote regarding what's going on comes from no other than a reflective, near death "Il Duce" himself "Lust for the irrational is the common thread between all our movements "
  3. I was only referring to the practice of using capital letters to make a point, I'm sure I've done it myself more often than I'd like to admit. Anyway, no problem.
  4. Shouting the word "not" does not make your statement any more true in my view. The issue is predictive polling (the kind that many get so wrong repeatedly) vs gathering and analyzing data about an event that has already happened (exit polling). There is a reason why international election observers rely on exit polling alongside forensics and PVT (parallel vote tabulation) as indicators whether a vote was fair and free. PVT being the preferred method in countries where civil conflict is present and voters have real reasons to fear retribution for being truthful in their answers. I'm not sure how PVTs are conducted in 100% electronic voting which is at the heart of the recount initiative, isn't it? Both exit polling and PVT data is being statistically analyzed under guidelines and discrepancies can lead to further investigation. Nobody's claiming that exit poll data can prove election fraud, but to state that statistics, which these processes rely on, "is NOT an accurate science" is misleading in the same way that stating "evolution is just a theory" My 2 cents.
  5. If the state department sends election observers to foreign countries and the exit polls (the gold standard in predicting election outcome) are totally out of whack with the tally from certain black-box vote counting machines that don't have a paper trail there's no way that the election would be certified as "free and fair". Polling might be an inaccurate science but statistics isn't. A voter who doesn't want to tell exit pollsters his choice for president will simply walk by w/o giving a response. The very few that might be lying about it are already accounted for in the margin of error. Something definitely smells fishy and I support Jill Steins' efforts.
  6. I can't speak for the industry as a whole but the unnecessary features like muting the mic when the boom moves out of the way, the circuitry that limits headphone volume and the positioning of the mic and it's response come to mind. The boom arm on the 25 lets you position the mic off to the side right outside of the plosive range. The mic on the 25 needs a bit of EQ (mostly low end) but it works and sounds great. Getting it into the correct position is a breeze since the boom slides through the pivot point at the headphone cup. The 26 boom places the mic further out front in front of the mouth and relying only on the foam to cut plosives does not work too well. The Beyer DT297 has the same problem, it's a superior sounding mic but placement is a problem. The 25 is pretty much perfect and the design should have been left alone. Shure showed this at NAB 2015 but it hasn't shipped as of yet. I thought it was great but I can't buy it.
  7. I have used a few different contraptions over the years in addition to the regular Sennheiser HMD 25's and Beyer DT 297's (Crown CM 311 mounted to Sony 7506 Headphones comes to mind) and they sounded great BUT talent and producers hated them. There is a reason the 25's are so popular and I can't , for the life of me, figure out why Sennheiser didn't improve on them. Instead we have the 26V2 which many A1's hate but use reluctantly. Try finding a couple of sets of used 25's, it's impossible, at least around here.
  8. Thanks, but those are a bit outside of my budget:)
  9. I know this question may be outside of the regularly posted topics but I'll try anyway... I need to buy some replacement sportscaster headsets. We still have a set of three Sennheiser hmd-25 (discontinued) that are a favorite with everybody, engineers, talent, etc. I've tried Beyer DT297s and they are okay but talent hates them, so we've gone back to using our old set of hmd-25s. Sennheiser is currently offering the hmd 26 v2, but A1's hate them for many reasons. I went to NAB in 2015 and Shure was announcing the BRH50M. The prototype looked and sounded good, a viable alternative but they never went into production. What should I buy to replace the old 25's? Thanks
  10. While I tend to agree with what you're stating it strikes me as interesting that the bandwidth debates precede digital audio and the relevance of frequency response out side of human hearinghas been topic of many discussions in the analog past. Take this example of a conversation with Rupert Neve with the understanding that this has very little to do with what's being discussed here or what we do for a living on a day to day basis.
  11. Quite the cryptic statement from the commission. Going back to listening to the debate one can clearly hear the wash from the PA when DT is speaking, proving beyond a doubt that he was amplified in the venue. The crowd reactions to his banter proves this. I’m not comfortable stating that he was as loud in the house as Hillary since an amplified female voice excites the room differently as an amplified male voice, creating a different tonality in the leakage we can hear in the mics, possibly making the female voice' leakage appear louder. But these events aren't mixed by rookies. I worked on a nationally televised issues convention (not even close to the same level of production as these debates) and the people in charge of Soundreinforcement had quite the resumes, the guy who did the sound design also designed the sound staging for Superbowls, etc, the live sound mixer (there was no FOH, only an onstage set seating 700 audience, wired with 144 Q&A mics, etc) had just come off the road mixing monitors for the Stones, etc.) I’m sure the FOH guy working this ultra high profile eventwould have switched to a back up if he had problems. For some insights on these productions see this: http://www.infocomm.org/cps/rde/xchg/infocomm/hs.xsl/36157.htm Maybe DT was unhappy about the fact that, unlike at his rallys the mic didn’t get louder and boomier as he ate it and starts shouting. Then there is the whole snorting/ sniffling thing that started this mess. Since DT has shown his willingness to ascribe ulterior motives regarding the incident (“on purpose?”) it seems fair to speculate why, after days went by, the commission decides to throw the FOH sound guy under the bus which is not cool IMO. Could it be because of a thread of lawsuit or no-show for the next round? FWIW, I'm not posting because of politics but because it irritates me that the commission is throwing an undoubtedly highly accomplished audio professional under the bus.....for what? Anyway, we need to hear from an eye (ear) witness from inside the venue. Unfortunately I haven’t found much besides this: http://fohonline.com/news/15443-presidential-debate-s-bad-mic-theory-debunked.html
  12. Very good point and I agree with keeping politics out of this but it is hard to do in this case because DT's absolutely nonsensical excuses, blaming a non-existing technical problem for his performance deficiencies. Imagine the director in your example using you, the soundie as an excuse for having made a lousy movie with a poorly written script and bad actors. That's what we're dealing with here IMHO.
  13. Mirror, would it be a stretch to point out that your post about Hillary (the merit of which I won't discuss here because this is an audio forum) has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of this thread?
  14. My opinion only, but when you listen to the debate you can clearly hear the slap back from the room. There are some artifacts from some sort of expander or auto mixer as mentioned earlier, but you can hear clearly when Donald speaks that the FOH guy was bringing him up to the same level in the house as Hillary. At certain points you can hear the house PA gently coming up in level ( not a gating artifact since) or reducing level, suggesting that the FOH engineer did ride levels as he should. Also important to remember is that the Broadcast A1 was probably in communication with the FOH engneer to alert him when the house sound was interfereing with the Broadcast mix. Anyway, DT's claim is bogus.
  15. IMO the lav was there for the broadcast mix only to catch the off-mic exchanges when the candidates aren't at their podium and maybe as a backup. It looks like a MKE-2 and the FOH guy would only use that as a last resort because it's an Omni. I have to do broadcast sound reinforcements gigs with MKE-2s all the time and aside from gain-before feedback issues you'd hear a lot more ambience/ PA wash than you heard during the debate. I believe we heard the podium mics only, both in the house as well as on the air.
  16. I think DT mentioned that it was "defective" because it picked up his breathing, duh. Remember that "stupid mic"in Pensacola last January, DT and mics don't get along.
  17. It was probably a clone of a real american mic, made by the Chinese, put there on purpose and it was defective, tremendously defective. Maybe he can get his 10-year old computer whiz son to develop a real time de-snifler plug in for the next round.
  18. As long as the director's name isn't Quentin Tarantino....
  19. If you have to shoot in a noisy environment then this would be an amazing tool to have but in my experience if there is a great new tool in my kit there'll be times I regret ever telling anyone about it. Slippery slope indeed.
  20. Really useful review and examples. Much appreciated.
  21. Those matted old jammers work perfectly well for Sports Outside Broadcast. Ours tend to migrate towards our truck as they get old.
  22. May I ask what kind of "blimp" you use? With the Rycote zeppelin/ windjammer gear I find that it's more or less transparent vs an uncovered mic, I wouldn't call it a "closed in sound" at all. If you feel your Softie (a Rycote as well) is transparent, so should be your"blimp" unless it's defective, worn, dirty, etc.
  23. To the OP: Mic pres fall into 2 categories, clean (wire plus gain) and colored (usually a function of some kind of distortion) This has nothing to do with tube vs Solid state as there are very clean tube deigns and fairly colored Solid state designs out there. But there are no good sounding cheap tube mic pres because it costs money to design and build them properly. Those starved plate designs Philip is referring to are horrible in terms of S/N, distortion and the "color" they impart on the signal can only be described as fizzy junk. Cheapest "real" tube mic pre I've come across is the Groove Tubes Brick, very good for the money, tons of color if that's your goal, but still noisy and only 55dB of gain. On the other hand you can usually get decent results with the clean pres from just about any recorder out there.
  24. Thanks for the response. I'd like to add that rolling off the treble at the guitar or amp is not the same as using a cable's capacitance to shape guitar tone. It comes down to how a guitar player utilizes his guitar and its controls. If flat frequency response was the ultimate goal in carrying a signal to the amp then low-impedance pickups would rule but many guitar players are sticking with their high Z PUs, interactive guitar volume and tonecontrols shifting resonance peaks up and down and cable capacitance is a big part of that equation as you are aware of since you mentioned coiled chords:) . To the OP, simply adding a cable after the receiver won't do the same thing since the receiver is a low Z source. In summary, if you use an acoustic guitar with PU it won't matter whether your wireless emulates cable, simply compensate at the amp. Same goes for electric guitar IF you don't use your volume and tone controls to get certain sounds. But if you're one of those players who use your guitars' controls the "old school" way (amp dimed and everything controlled at the guitar) then be aware that those controls will be acting differently. I hope this adds to the discussion.
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