<<<I start to feel like I’m going back to my signal analysis classes>>>
That’s what we’re doing – with a tilt towards acoustics.
<<<I’d also like to try to connect the mic directly to my soundcard line in (it’s an Asus Xonar Essence STX), but I need to solve the phantom power problem first…>>>
Built-in microphone amplifiers almost never sound very good because of the close proximity to the noisy electronics inside the computer. Turn on an AM radio and set it down on top of the computer. External is almost always better.
People make stand-alone Phantom Inserters (ART maybe).
<<<Another option is to build my own DIY interface… I’m an electronics engineer so I got the skills, just not sure if I have the time/patience for it>>>
I actually finish them, but the project duration is usually measured in years. The current microphone amplifier project just took delivery of a bag of capacitors from Mouser.
I need to go back and look at the thread again. Wasn’t the original task to purchase a USB microphone? You may have whizzed right past the ability of those things a long time ago.
I know, when I bought new “monster” graphics card I could no longer stand listening to anything on headphones from the computer… It would sound like if I was inside a chopper… That’s the reason why I bought the Xonar… and I was quite impressed with its headphones output… it’s really quiet, so I was wondering if the inputs would be as quiet as the outputs…
People make stand-alone Phantom Inserters (ART maybe).
I’ll have to search more about that…
I need to go back and look at the thread again. Wasn’t the original task to purchase a USB microphone? You may have whizzed right past the ability of those things a long time ago.
Indeed… But as for any 5 pages long thread… the latest posts rarely have anything to do with the starting subject
Enough typing now… gonna record something 'cause my 30 min free time has only 25 min left now
Silence gaps at the beginning and at end. No editing… dc offset and everything else still there…
First part of a brazilian piece.
I tried to record it away from the pc but the other place I moved the mic too didn’t have very good acoustics and sound was too boomy… so back near the pc… I recorded bits of silence in each division but I didn’t notice much difference anyway…
Only problem with this room is that during the day you can often hear the sound of cars passing by in the street…
Well my free time is over… I’ll try to get back to it tomorrow.
Excellent. Never try to “help us out.” I knew a repair person with a posting in his shop. $20 per hour to fix something. $200 per hour if you tried to fix it first.
Where are you? Much of the crew is in Great Britain. I’m in LA. The Systems Administrator is in Argentina. It’s good to keep the time zones in the back of your head.
Did we actually post your current configuration? I’ll go back through and look.
Last time we did this was a woman singing folk songs in her sitting room. I think we took that one to seven pages.
Nice posting… I should start saying that to some ppl I work for… I remember some years ago someone desperately calling me on the phone at late night saying “help! help! my computer won’t start…” to which I replied “what were you doing before that happened?”, the answer was something like “oh nothing much… just cleaning up the harddisk… I was running out of space so I deleted some useless files”
Where are you? Much of the crew is in Great Britain. I’m in LA. The Systems Administrator is in Argentina. It’s good to keep the time zones in the back of your head.
I’m from Portugal same timezone as in the UK. Although I don’t have a fixed schedule, so you might find me posting at the most unusual hours of the day…
Did we actually post your current configuration? I’ll go back through and look.
I’m not sure which details are relevant here, so I’ll try to give as much information as possible without going annoyingly detailed…
Mic: T.Bone SC1100
Mic-computer interface: T.Bone USB MicPlug + 10m xlr-xlr cable
computer1: standard recent PC with Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card, running Debian (mostly “testing”), also has windows xp installed but I rarely boot it.
computer2: MacBookPro running MacOS-X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard)
Audacity version: 1.3.11 (on both computers)
If anything else is relevant here just let me know and I’ll give more detail
Last time we did this was a woman singing folk songs in her sitting room. I think we took that one to seven pages.
<<<Mic: T.Bone SC1100
Mic-computer interface: T.Bone USB MicPlug>>>
Well, that’s painful, isn’t it? Apparently, nobody makes those microphones. Thousands of people sell them, but Google has no idea who manufacturers them, where, or why.
From the little I got from the ads, the SC1100 is a condenser microphone and in spite of appearances, is not end-fire. You have to aim the side of the microphone at the performance and you have to get the correct side so as not to be in the notch during cardioid performances. You are doing all that, right?
Or correct me since you have the instructions and I don’t.
If you can point to a manufacturer’s web site, that would go a very long way.
I’m less excited about the USB Mic Plug. You can’t cram enough electronics into that small a space to generate the noise free components needed for microphone amplifying. I’m betting that’s where the hiss is coming from.
You need to know to look in the sound card setups and find a “+20dB Mic Boost” clicker. The microphone amplifier channel is useless without that since generic “mic amps” give only 40dB boost, tops. You need 60dB boost minimum for live performances. Large, successful, stand-alone microphone channels go to 70dB gain. News Gathering equipment can go higher yet since they’re interested in volume over quality.
I’m going to spend the weekend underwater since I took delivery of some very interesting audio gadgets, plus all the rest of the weekend stuff.
I could sit in the corner, drink tea and listen to that for a long time…
Hmmmmm?
Oh, right. You have the microphone aimed correctly. It would never sound like that with the aiming wrong. The tonal balance is perfect (IMHO).
Select a healthy chunk of that noise.
Analyze > Plot Spectrum (Size: 8192, Axis: Log Frequency, Expand the window by pulling on one corner)
Straight amplifier noise is more or less gracefully spread over that display. Yours isn’t. Yours is lumpy. If you listen to the noise with the amplifier turned way up, it’s not just gentle rain wishing in the trees. There’s hard noises in there as well.
We are listening to the USB Plug struggling to amplify a very tiny signal over a thousand times while using the dirty 5v coming from the computer’s USB port.
And it’s doing well. I had one really bad unit where I could tell when the hard drive spun up by the noises in the background.
We’ll wait for the other elves, but I think this is so typical of this type of device that there’s very little question. Did you save the receipts?
The mic is sold by Thomann I think T-Bone is their own brand. Unfortunately the mic didn’t come with any instructions and I couldn’t find any on thomann’s website… Ain’t that interesting? hehe
As for the micplug… same thing… and yes I would bet that’s the source of hiss… but I wasn’t expecting a breathtaking performance from a €29 device…
I believe I’m aiming at the right side of the mic since it’s the one from which I get higher volume.
As for mic boost option in sound card options I think I don’t have it… When I connect the micplug it shows up as a standalone usb device and I don’t remember seeing such option there… either in linux or macos-x, though that option usually shows up next to the mic volume bar on the computers sound card options… But anyway from my (little) experience that +20dB boost also boosts the noise as well…
As for sending the micplug back… For the price and for the size and comodity of not needing any external power supply or anything else… I think I’ll keep it anyways, it’s performance seems to be fair enough for the price…
Finally after many rainy weekends there’s a beautiful sunny day so I’m going out for hiking now, I’ll check your sample later when I get back home.
Have fun underwater I’m hoping to stay “water-free” this weekend hehe only water I expect to see will the waterfall along the trail
It is (sort of) their own brand. Thomann are the largest music equipment retailer in Europe and have several “own brands” (T-Bone, T-Box, Harley Benton, Millennium, Stairville, Swissonic…). Most of these “brands” are made by other (reputable) manufacturers for Thomann, re-badged and sold at a much lower price than the original. Thomann have also bought some manufacturers who now manufacture equipment exclusively for Thomann. I believe their guitars (Harley Benton) are made “in-house”. I’ve been using Thomann for years and own a lot of their own brand stuff. The very cheapest budget stuff they do tends to be (unsurprisingly) “cheap”. I think the USB MicPlug probably falls into this bracket. Their less cheap equipment is still relatively inexpensive and is usually exceptional value for money. The SC1100 is in this bracket.
The only item that I’ve had from Thomann that I was disappointed with was a “T-Bone MB85” dynamic microphone. It worked but was definitely a “cheap” mic. On the other hand I have bought several “T-Bone MB85 beta” dynamic microphones (for stage work) and they are fantastic - very similar to a Sure SM58 but a bit brighter. To be critical, the bottom end is not quite as smooth as an SM58 and there is a fraction more handling noise, but the build quality is great and in many situations the improved top end more than makes up for the minor drawbacks. The €37 price tag makes it a fantastic bargain. The bottom line from the “Sound-on-Sound” review of the MB85 beta was “How Much!!!”
I’d agree there. Your tests on your friends sound card shows a noticeable improvement when using a considerably more expensive sound card. For €29 I don’t think you can complain.
You won’t have on a USB device.
Yes it will.
The only thing that concerned me was the rattling that you mentioned. It could just be plastic clip from the casing that has broken off inside, but if you are concerned about it get in touch with their customer services - I’ve generally found them to be very helpful (and they have English speaking staff if that’s your native language).
I’m not at home at the moment so I’ve only listened to it on my laptop. Looking forward to hearing it properly at home.
It has good, quiet gain, supplies headphone connections, and +48v Phantom.
You say so good things about that Peavey PV6 that I’m starting to feel that I should get one
$99 USD is really a good price, but I don’t think I can’t find that price in Europe… And ordering from USA would add a lot of taxes to it that could give it a considerable price increase…
Anyway I was search amazon uk for it and I found this and this. Apart from the first one being cheaper and having more buttons on the pic I was wondering what the differences would be… The pic on the second link looks like the same as the link you posted, but the other by the description seems pretty much the same…
There was supposed to be a significant theatrical pause between those two statements. The +20dB Mic Boost has nothing to do with USB. The USB device handles all that very nicely by itself.
The boost is important – really important – if you use the analog input of the sound card. It’s frequently the difference between having a performance and not – assuming you’re not going into heavy post production. And our training sessions aren’t.
Anybody listen to the patched recordings I posted? It’s really easy to produce that effect and it’s a significant improvement in the presentation noise level without affecting the performance at all.
they are made in china
(at least the cheap ones are - few expensive ones may still be made in germany – and if not completely made in china many use parts from china)
generic mikes are cranked out by a few factories then
many vendors put their own brand label on them
many use the generic case
some have a different case made to make the mike look unique
may or may not be some better quality in some of the higher priced ones but only IF the seller requested and paid the factory for it
but in some cases it seems as if the only difference is the higher price for the “better” brand logo
if its powered from usb it is an electret and not a “real” condensor type mike. trades convenience and cost for some quality of signal.
I was just thinking about this as my tea solidified. What? Doesn’t your tea hold a spoon upright?
Anyway a Hollywood production engineer is performing custom noise reduction on a live guitar performance capture from a hiker in Portugal using software written to task produced, I believe, in Manchester.
<<<You say so good things about that Peavey PV6 that I’m starting to feel that I should get one>>>
It’s extraordinarily difficult to beat this unit. I have a very small field microphone mixer that I will shortly be posting on eBay. Yes, it’s tiny and battery powered, but the power of ten less expensive Peavey runs circles around it – given the Peavey is not battery operated.
We have either three or four in the family now. I own one and the company owns either two or three for training and performance sessions.
Koz have you tested any Art Tube MP? I’m thinking about maybe getting one of those… My soundcard line-in seems to be really quiet… Not sure if I can say the same about the mac, but for that i still have the usb micplug… Well… sort of… my micplug had a small accident today
I was wondering what that loose piece inside could be so I decided to open it… the “loose piece” seems to be an “extra” button… it was a button like the one on the phantom power switch that was inside… I just don’t know why it was there… spare part? ou accidentaly got lost in there during assembly… The good news are that everything else inside was intact… and I say was because that’s past… no longer true…
3 wires got disconnected while I was trying to pull i out… anyway nothing that my soldering iron can’t fix…
