"Don Pearce" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 08:23:28 +0300, "Iain Churches"
wrote:


Yesterday, I sent a short segment to Keith by e-mail, for him to
hear the difference, I did not really expect him to post it. This
is copyright material, even though it is only a first rehearsal. I
have asked him to take it down by 1200 hrs UK time.


I've only just managed to do that - Pipex was having one of its 'turns'
and not letting me (or *anybody* else) on! The chances that your clients
are among the dozen or so visitors I get each week are possibly slim (??
:-) and even if they were, the chances they hit that link before I
nipped it are, I would have thought, even slimmer...!!??

(If there's any comeback, tell them there's *no charge* for the free
publicity!! ;-)

Asittapens, it looks like the Pipex webspace is on and off like a
whore's drawers anyway - so I doubt *anybody* will get on much for a
while yet!!



It is not difficult to EQ the two tracks to sound similar, (we
tried an inverted bell with a fairly wide Q centred on 3k8) But
the timbre, particularly of celli is still rather disappointing,
Interesting also that the centre image was difficult to establish
with the Chinkies. The RH mic had more gain.


Yet the waveform in SoundForge shows the Left Channel to be a little
'louder' if anything?


Did you listen to my equalization? I think it turned out quite well,
but with this mic we might be at or beyond the limit of what can be
rescued. My eq was considerably more complex than the one you tried -
I used the FFT filter in Audition, so I think it has possibly made a
better job of removing those sharp barbs from the strings.


I think your EQ job went a long way to ironing out the differences...



I could have done with some content above 9kHz to do a proper job
though. It all sounded very filtered by the low rate MP3 coding.



....as did that...


I suppose that when you are producing rather than recording music,the
word "bad" doesn't come into it (apart from perhaps unreliability). A
mic is either right or wrong for a job.


Yes. I wouldn't have thought anyone in his right mind would expect a
dirt cheap generic/unbranded Chinese mic to outperform or even in any
way match a Neumann or similar mic and use one for serious, commercial
work.

The point, once again, is that the cheepy Chinky stuff is, if nothing
else, cheep enough to allow people to 'have a go' and is probably plenty
good enough for use in bedroom studios! That said, it does look like
it's possibly to take *cheapskating* a little too far - with both mics
and valve amps. I think (and hope) the more plausible-looking *brands*
like the CAD and SE Electronics I have here are a wee bit different.
When I get the 'replacement' valve mic - another CAD:

http://www.cadmics.com/Trion8000.htm


I will post a (probably final) set of clips for comparison purposes when
I can get Swim revved up on the clart and joanna - may even jingle a set
of keys as well!!

(What I would like is a pair of Neumanns *and* a pair of 'Unbranded
Chinkies' to complete the spectrum, but I'm not about to go and *buy*
either one!! :-)