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New from Rycote: Looks interesting


Eric Toline

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" this is my actual setting. Schoeps CCM- 5 meters XLR to XLR canare starquad cable - Tac!T- Sounddevices 552 and now 664. When I remove the Tac!T, I don't have any problems ".... "I some have problems when i put my cell phone searching a network close to the Tac!T" [Olphi]

Sounddevices inputs are well-designed, as are Schoeps mics, though interestingly the CCM range seems to feature fairly frequently in interference problems - something that Helmut Wittek (Schoeps) and I are trying to get to the bottom of.

At the very high levels of AM interference generated when a cellphone registers it can be hard to prevent RF getting into the audio. This may be a case of incomplete screening - only Neutrik EMC XLRs even attempt full screening - but may also be injection of RF into the audio cores, follolwed by "detection" in the Tac!T. The RF filters are pretty good but they do have limits to what they can achieve.

It would be very interesting if you could swap the CCM for an alternative mic as a test. The output circuitry of a mic inevitably interacts with both active devices such as the Tac!T and possibly with passive connectors if these cause an impedance change at RF. I hasten to add that this is not trying to shift blame onto the CCM, but to analyse what the interfence path is.

If an alternative mic produces greater or lesser levels of interference under the same conditions that would be extremely useful knowledge. These sort of investigations ~have~ to involve users since trying to replicate them on the bench is often impossible.

Chris Woolf

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Pretty cool and Ill more than likely be picking one up, however this I dont get:

Rycote Tac!T (pronounced "Tas-It")

Really? I would have pronounced that "Tack Tee". How did they envision getting an "s" sound from a "c" and an "eye" sound from an "!"?

Weird marketing ideas are just a pet peeve of mine. But the product itself sounds great and Im glad there is finally a cheap alternative in such a compact form to the Schoeps.

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Never heard the word 'Tacit'?

tac·it [tas-it]

   [tas-it] nothing: a tacit partner.

1. understood without being openly expressed; implied: tacit approval.

2. silent; saying nothing: a tacit partner.

3. unvoiced or unspoken: a tacit prayer.

Well I feel kinda dumb... Learn something new everyday I guess.

Thank you life for yet another lesson in humility.

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> It doesn't help though when manufacturers are, well, shall we say 'creative' with their use of punctuation marks>

Believe me, these things are never easy!

Tacit, or the musical tacet - as in keeping things quiet - made total sense for the project I was working on but a good friend of mine had already registered the name for his company. I asked him if a slight modification that looked similar would be OK by him and he was quite happy with that.

Project names often sneak themselves into becoming product names, and thus are these anomalies enshrined forever;}

Chris Woolf

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  • 2 years later...

Hi,

i'm digging out this subject because I wonder how the tac!t cable can be customised.

as i understand the filter is in the male connector. Would it be possible then to join two Tac!t cable at female end inside a 5pin female connector (NC5FXX)?

to work with MS mics without having to add the weight and space of two Tac!t inside the bag.

 

thank you

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Hi,

i'm digging out this subject because I wonder how the tac!t cable can be customised.

as i understand the filter is in the male connector. Would it be possible then to join two Tac!t cable at female end inside a 5pin female connector (NC5FXX)?

to work with MS mics without having to add the weight and space of two Tac!t inside the bag.

 

thank you

It's possible to order the circuit boards directly from rycote so they can be incorporated into whatever you like. Might be difficult getting two in the same connector, though

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I bought two of these cables earlier this year. I leave them attached to the mixer end of my 664 and run mkh60 & 8050's. Cable works great to tame the handling noise of the 8050 on a boom in a run&gun. They are however fairly fragile it would seem. I have had two fail now on me with an intermittent shorting coming at the male end. Noise shows up when i walk and my bag moves. Opening it up there is a circuit board on the M end so its beyond my level of servicing. They are a nice product but maybe more suited to be built into a cart and never subjected to movement.

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I bought two of these cables earlier this year. I leave them attached to the mixer end of my 664 and run mkh60 & 8050's. Cable works great to tame the handling noise of the 8050 on a boom in a run&gun. They are however fairly fragile it would seem. I have had two fail now on me with an intermittent shorting coming at the male end. Noise shows up when i walk and my bag moves. Opening it up there is a circuit board on the M end so its beyond my level of servicing. They are a nice product but maybe more suited to be built into a cart and never subjected to movement.

Tell Rycote (i think they would want to know) and send the cables back to dealer or Rycote - this is not acceptable and i think they would agree.

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The Tac!t boards fit directly onto the pins of a Neutrik NC3MXX. You can't double them up in an NC5-MXX because there simply isn't room. There's a full balanced amplifier and filter happening in there. By using the NC3 as the housing it was possible to make a much more cost effective filter than the competition - housing and assembly costs are a significant factor.

The Tac!its shouldn't be fragile in use. The bare boards - like any miniature surface mount assembly - are delicate and can easily be destroyed, but once assembled in the housing they are mechanically strong. There have been a very few cases of ones damaged in manufacture, that weren't trapped by test - and a few more where customers have disassembled the NC3 to have a peep... and wiped a component off the board in doing so. But Rycote will always replace anything that was faulty in manufacture.

For those who are confident about handling raw PCBs we have let a few bare boards out for people to assemble them in idiosyncratic housings, but customers need good eyesight and tender, well-grounded fingers. It isn't a task for those that perform pigeon-shit soldering after a couple of beers.

The Tac!t is powered by the P48 phantom as well as passing it through to the mic. Everything must be truly balanced for the filter to work as intended. If the supply is not to a proper P48 spec the Tac!t won't operate correctly, or might be destroyed.

 

Chris Woolf (The Tac1t's daddy)

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[Thank you, Simon, for doing the photos]

The oblong pads to the left of the lower picture, and the one between the red-painted chips in the top one, fit in between the NC3MXX solder pins - the pcb is a special thickness to allow this. You can't do the same trick with other versions of connector.

The red-painted sections are to give some protection to the anti-RF ferrites that are relatively easily damaged during assembly ... or dis-assembly.

The turret tags are the connection to the microphone, and because the PCB fits inside the collet sleeve, the cord grip still functions as normal (max cable diameter 5mm).

 

Chris Woolf

"An AES42 fixes all."

 

It does, it does! But we are a long, long way from getting any range of AES42 mics, and there's still the minor problem of having to provide around 2W to keep the mic cooked, as opposed to just 10% of that for P48.

And IP connected mics could well overtake AES42.

Oh dear. It makes me feel old!

Chris Woolf

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  • 2 months later...

According to my sound devices 633 manual, their high pass filter is before any amplification (unlike some mixers), and so presumably also before any limiting, so If I have the high pass filter in I wouldn't need one of these cables right? The SD633 is only 12dB but still should get rid of most problems? Any opinions? (opening myself up for a kicking here!!)....

From the manual: 

The 633’s High-pass Filter circuit is unique because of its placement before any electronic amplifica- tion. Most mixers’ High-pass Filter circuits are placed after the microphone preamplifier, such that all of the low-frequency signals get amplified. By virtue of the 633’s circuit cutting the low-frequency signals before amplification, higher headroom is achieved in the presence of signals with significant low-frequency energy.

 

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2 hours ago, chrisyking said:

According to my sound devices 633 manual, their high pass filter is before any amplification (unlike some mixers)

From the manual: 

The 633’s High-pass Filter circuit is unique because of its placement before any electronic amplifica- tion. Most mixers’ High-pass Filter circuits are placed after the microphone preamplifier, such that all of the low-frequency signals get amplified. By virtue of the 633’s circuit cutting the low-frequency signals before amplification, higher headroom is achieved in the presence of signals with significant low-frequency energy.

A side note, just for information sake, one of the reasons I have been so pleased with the sound of my Cooper Mixers (old, analog, heavy, etc.) is that Andy used two HiPass filters, one before the mic preamp and one after --- also provided a very steep curve (as an option) of 18 db per octave. Both filters are switchable, in and out. 

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  • 5 months later...

Hi,

A TAC!T compatibility question:

The spec sheet for the cable lists a number of mics as compatible (http://mymic.rycote.com/products/connboxes-cables/hi-pass-filter/cable-w_tact-filter-xlr-3f_3m-l45cm-x-48mm/)

I experienced handling noise from a MKH 416 (as pictured) on a Ktek KEG-150 boom, and was hoping the TAC!T would be an option for reducing it.

But the 416 isn't on the list: is there something specific about how the 416 responds to sound that would 'nullify' any noise reduction from the TAC!T cable?

 

Thx,

 

Mike

IMG_1512.JPG

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