soundmanjohn

This unit is a pre-production model and the belt clip is fixed: production models will have a removeable clip. Not sure about power, but can probably find out.

Got to handle this little fella yesterday: no sharp corners, talent skin friendly, no external antenna, rechargeable battery giving seven hours continuous. No portable receivers as yet, but rack-mounted 2 & 4 channel units can be 12 v dc powered. Not cheap, but very neat.

The MixPre-6 is €899 excluding tax. FedEx to the UK is €25. No definite date for delivery, but expected any time soon, I guess.

Waiting to hear from Ambient in Germany when they have mine in stock. Great company, easy to deal with and a couple of hundred bucks cheaper than buying in the UK. WIll report in as soon as it gets here. John

I'm saving up for a Mix-Pre 6 as a backup/alternative to my ageing 744, but am also surprised and a bit dismayed by the UK price-point, which is pretty high, at approximately US$1,240.00 pre-tax. VAT adds 20%, so we're nearer US$1,500.00. The Zoom F4 comes in at just over half that, at around US$770.00, which is a big difference, so I'm not sure how much of dent these are going to make in the UK market at the moment. Regardless, it's something I'm looking forward to for later in the year. Regards,

TwistedWave will do the batch conversion for you, albeit outside ProTools, or ask Svein for a beta of Harpex-X, which will do the SPS A-B conversion as well as the 5.1 transcode. The Ambeo plug-in is just for the Ambeo mic, and isn't actually that good, in my opinion.

My first ever kit for recording sound effects was a second-hand Uher 4000S and an AKG D707. A pair of DT48s, cheap from the local hi-fi emporium who had got them in for a customer who hated them and gave them back, lasted me for years, with a complete refurb from Beyer UK after about twenty years. Shortly after, they were stolen from a committee room at The Houses Of Parliament. Went from mono Uher to stereo Uher, Sony TCD5 Pro cassette machine, Sony TCD D10 DAT, Metric Halo 2882 & laptop, then SD 788T. More mics, including assorted Soundfields and Rycotes galore. Happy now. John

And here's another book for you to look at: Gordon Hempton's 'Earth Is A Solar-Powered Jukebox' written by the man who's been there and done that. https://quietplanet.com/products/book

Unless there's no wind at all, you may have problems. Foam windshields are fine in a studio, but nothing beats a properly designed basket-windshield when you're outdoors.

Wel, if you read the beginning of the article, it does mention what else I mostly use for recording when I'm not using the Soundfield, which is a M/S pair using MKH30/40 in a Rycote windshield. I thoroughly recommend that set up for low noise and portability. You can find them used within your budget from various places. Replacing the MKH40 with an MKH50 or a 20 would give you more options but push your budget through the roof, but we've been there before, I think.

Yes, exactly. This is the problem I'm finding with this thread: we could go on for ever making recommendations, but without one fairly vital piece of information, that of your actual budget, most of it will be a total waste of time. We've gone from just over £1,000 for all the kit, to the realms of £3,000 for a pair of Neumann LDC digital mics and the associated DMI-2 controller and another couple of grand for a recorder that takes AES in to go with it. Decide on a budget, research the kit that you can afford within your budget and then rent to see what works for you. Don't forget to factor in windshields, cables, power-supplies, a stand or boom pole, headphones, and a bag along with everything else. Go back and look at your original plan and work on that premise. Otherwise, you'll spend forever getting recommendations for kit and no time at all actually getting out and recording. For further reading, the Bernie Krause books are excellent: you could also look at Cathy Lane & Angus Carlyle's 'In The Field - The Art of Field Recording' and on a rather more esoteric level, another collection of essays and interviews called 'Autumn Leaves - Sound and the Environment in Artistic Practice' edited by Angus Carlyle.

My take on the DPA mics: http://livedesignonline.com/business-people-news/good-things-come-small-packages You may need to register to read, but it's a good magazine anyway. Regards, John

I'm in London & I've got a Telinga you can borrow, if you want to try one out: you'll need an omni like an 8020 as it's just the reflector & pistol grip. It's one of the transparent roll-up models, so easy to transport. Alternatively, I've got an old green reflector that needs a bit of TLC, brackets, etc., that's your for £20 Drop me a PM. John

Just one other little thing: Over here in London, we pronounce our River Thames as 'Tems' rather than the way it's spelt. Regards, John

Kevin, I use these people: https://www.asoundeffect.com and also these people: http://www.sonniss.com/sound-effects/ to sell my libraries. They expect well-prepared files and metadata (Soundminer helps) and will take a cut of the sale price. Be warned that the market seems to be saturated at the moment, so your material needs either to be very different or very well presented; preferably both. Bigger (lots of huge files) seems to be better, almost regardless of quality of content, at the moment, but I guess that'll settle down. The major effects guys sell from their own web-sites, using custom set-ups and I tried this for a while until a ridiculous tax law aimed at big business came in and screwed everything up for small traders in Europe. As you're in the USA, this needn't worry you and I used these guys https://getdpd.com/ to set up a web distribution service. Not cheap, but very efficient. Best of luck, John

Well, Len (the proprietor of Core Sound) has done some testing and comparisons. Here's the gist from the Facebook VR list. He was a bit more open with me, but I'm under an NDA. Start quote: "We've recently measured our production Ambeo and its "ambisonic correction filter.") In addition to its boosting noise level by its high frequency EQ, our recent measurements show that the Sennheiser Ambeo "ambisonic correction filter" adds modulation noise that degrades the audio S/N substantially. It also does a few other interesting things that are not optimal." And later, in answer to a comment about the TetraMic's noise performance: "The noise we discovered in the Ambeo plugin is modulation noise. "Modulation noise" means that it is imposed on the audio signal, and not something you'd hear if there was silence (no audio signal). The noise that you're hearing when you record with TetraMic is probably noise from your microphone pre-amp, as you compensate for the lower output of the TetraMic capsules. If you did your gain compensation digitally in your DAW, or used the best quality microphone pre-amps (like the Metric Halo ULN-8 or something similar in noise performance), you'd likely not hear what you're describing. Then you'd only hear the difference when recording the very quietest sound sources; then capsule self-noise dominates. For example, that would be when recording hammered dulcimers in a very quiet recording studio." TetraMic's B-format frequency response is -2 dB at 30 Hz. Our measurements show that Ambeo is -3 dB at 90 Hz." End quote. I'm sure there will be more at some point, and once I get my demo Ambeo back again, I'll do a comparison test with the Ambeo and a TetraMic and possibly an ST450 as well. Len's point about a decent pre-amp is the key here: I do use a Metric Halo ULN-8 with my TetraMic. It needs bags of noise-free gain to compensate for its rather low output level. All the best, John

I don't think it's generally available yet: as a beta tester, I get my files from a different location. There may be a reason Svein hasn't released it to the wild yet, but if you drop him a line, he may well be happy to point you in the right direction. Oh, and with regard to the self-noise of the Ambeo and SPS200, I suspect it's actually more to do with the recorder than the mic in my case. I was using a Tascam 680 with the SPS200, as I hadn't quite saved up enough for my current SD788, which I used with the Ambeo. Rather a lot of difference in the pre-amps... All the best, John

I had one on loan from Sennheiser for a couple of weeks and was generally impressed with how it behaved, although it doesn't measure up to a Soundfield. It's well built, which makes it quite heavy (just over 400 grams: for comparison, a Soundfield ST450 is 291 grams and the TetraMic is 89 grams), uses a screw-fit DIN connector, which feels a little cheap - definitely not a Lemo - and quite chunky. Rycote have just announced a Cyclone that works for the Ambeo and I got hands-on with it yesterday at BVE in London, so location work shouldn't be a problem. They've made a right-angle connector for the mic connection, which is very neat and helps with the fact that the mic is also pretty long at 212mm without the connector and 270mm with. I used it outside on a reasonable chilly night in a noisy scenario with no problems, and more recentlly outdoors on a still day for some close-up birdsong which gave good results, although in both cases the sound-field is a little less focused than I would like. Sennheiser claims a response of 20-20kHz, but I'd say it rolls off pretty steeply at the bottom end from about 80Hz. There's no overall calibration file for each microphone, which is the same as for the SPS200, but not for the TetraMic, which comes with a calibration file to even out the response and my TetraMic goes all the way down, which is both good and bad, obviously. The Ambeo has some form of preamp built in and is balanced out and powered via standard 48V Phantom and the output level is perfectly fine into the mic input of an SD788, for example. My ST450 outputs at line level from the control box and needs 12 via a Hirose, which makes it less portable than the Ambeo or the SPS200, but I like the extra features available with the control box. The Ambeo, the SPS200 and the TetraMic all output in what's called A-Format, which is basically just the capsule outputs: in order to get useable audio from it, you need to do a conversion from A-Format to B-Format. Sennheiser provides a plug-in to do that conversion and it allows you to set rotation, mic position and a low-cut filter. It also lets you choose the B-Format output; either the older FuMa format, or what's becoming the new standard, AmbiX, which is nice. However, I found that it didn't play nicely with my standard workflow, which is Nuendo-based, and I had to make the conversion from A-B in TwistedWave. Luckily, Svein Berige at Harpex has a beta of his brilliant plug-in which handles both the SPS and the Ambeo A-Format inputs as well as standard Soundfield B-Format and a whole bunch of other refinements and may soon handle the TetraMic as well. Self-noise is difficult to judge: I'd say probably a bit better than the SPS, but that's based on memory, really. The TetraMic needs a superaltive pre-amp, because the output level is pretty low and you need the gain whacked up on quiet atmospheres, so the lower-cost recorders are not really compatible. They're a bit scarce at the moment, so I was only able to hold on to my test version for a short period before it had to go back to Sennheiser to be passed on to someone else, but I'm hoping to get one back later on this year for some music recording comparisons with the Soundfield and the TetraMic. I also have a comparison test with the Ambeo and the Zoom H2n in ambience mode - horizontal only, obviously, and that's quite interesting... If I didn't already own two tetrahedral arrays, I'd seriously consider buying an Ambeo for sound effects work, but not for music recording. Regards, John

Found this whilst looking up music related items for Midnight Cowboy. IMDB lists the boom op as Robert Rogow. John

Izoptope are having assorted sales until the end of the year and one of the items on deep sale is the Advanced version of Izotope RX 5, which is down to $749. Weirdly, if you already own RX 5 standard, the upgrade price to Advanced is $849 with no sale discount available, so it's currently $100 cheaper to buy Advanced outright than to upgrade from standard. No idea why this should be, but the same applies to the RX Post Production Suite, currently down to $999 for the full program, while the upgrade from RX 5 standard is still at $1,149. I've had this confirmed by Izotope; see below. Hi John, Thanks for reaching out. You’re right, the current promotion (through December 31) actually saves you more than the upgrade coupon, and the upgrade coupon cannot be combined with the promotion. Sorry for any confusion this causes.

A while ago I bought a couple of very cheap electret mics from a company called Karma Mics - http://www.karmamics.com/shop/Condenser-Mics/ - a pair with clips for $26, plus postage to the UK. I bought them as throw-aways for a car recording project that I had planned where it was highly likely that the mics might get damaged and I didn't want to risk anything expensive. In the end, the project fell through and they languished in the mic drawer. I eventually hauled them out just to see how they sounded and ended up using them to save a vocal overload from a wireless mic (not under my control) and was quite surprised at how well they behaved. I've since used them for sound effects recordings in assorted odd locations where I wouldn't risk my Schoeps or Sennheisers and they turn in usable, if not spectacular results. Checking the website, they're now marked as out of stock, so I guess the Chinese have found a more lucrative market, but sometimes a cheap and cheerful mic can be a useful addition to the mic locker. Cheers, John

His name may not be familiar to those of you in the USA, but Adrian Kerridge was a leading pop music engineer and producer in the 1960s and later a pioneer in the field of music recording for film scores here in the UK; and for those of you who have used CADAC consoles, the first 'A' is for Adrian. He ran two major studios here in London, now both sadly gone: CTS Wembley - http://www.malonedigital.com/studios-cts.htm and Landsdowne Studios - http://www.philsbook.com/lansdowne.htm It was pleasure to meet with him on various occasions, both in studios, mostly when being my wife's 'cello porter, and on a more professional level at AES meetings. There's a full obituary here: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/those-we-have-lost-memorials-rips-obituaries/1114601-rip-adrian-kerridge.html Regards, John

The Daily Mail is currently being sued by Melania Trump for suggesting she was an illegal immigrant and a sex-worker. Could there possibly be a connection here? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/01/melania-trump-daily-mail-lawsuit And as Rich says, the paper doesn't exactly have a good reputation for accuracy in their stories: they went for a friend of mine in the most spectacular way with the biggest load of snide, suggestive bullsh*t I've ever read. She got a 'clarification' in a tiny paragraph a few months later, as far as I know. The editor is a foul-mouthed misogynist git whose paper regular prints pictures of teenage daughters of celebs with captions drooling over how "all grown up" they are. Pond scum, really, who's paid ten times more than the prime minister of the UK for feeding the paranoia of its prejudiced readers.

I have an MK8, along with assorted other Schoeps capsules and 4 CMC6 bodies, but I also have four KC5 extension cables, so I can make a reasonably low profile M/S pair if I need to. A CCM8 just means that you have a CCM8, whereas a CMC & MK8 means that you have many other possibilities. Regards, John

Pretty sure that the power connector is a 5 pin locking Preh DIN connector with 240 degree pin spacing. We used to use these all the time in theatre, before Sennheiser became the norm. You could also take the ECM50 apart and replace the electret capsule for rather less than the cost of buying a new microphone. Bettersound are still going and are just down the road from me here in London. Let me know if you have communication problems and I'll see what I can do. All the best, John