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Audiopool · 5th June 2005, 05:18 PM

I have EXTENSIVE experience with measuring MC012's. I have done this for a local Oktava distributor for some years now. I guess I personally have measured well over 50 pairs, and my colleague another 20 or so. The variations in output is NOT very big. Either you have a flawed pair of Oktavas or your chinese mics have too much (in my opinion) output.

Edit:

BTW, the typical roll off for the russian MC012 is at 17kHz and around 3dB roll-off until 20kHz. There IS a difference in this respect, but I personally think the balancing is the biggest drawback with the chinese. And of course the assembly - the screws anr only fastened in plastic. I believe that this is not a good design, and that it will not stand the wear and tear of a long lifetime.

Edit 2:

Are your sure your mixer output are calibrated? Or did you use the same output? Your preamps also shows nasty distorsion in some of the sound files. What kind of mixing board do you use?
At a scandinavian forum someone wrote that you padded the mixer whan you recorded the chinese Oktavas. This would indicate a too high output in your chinese Oktavas and this will be a problem when recording loud soundsources, since the mic does not ship with a pad.

Edit 3: Since the electronics are the same (apart from some strange values in the chinese mic) and the capsule design similar (although not the same, more about this any day soon. We are dissasembing the capsules now...), I have really a problem with accepting a much higher output even if your chinese Oktavas are defect. The layout is basically the same between the mics, the chinese use differents transistors, but these will NOT give a higher output. Actually the russian FET is, although not very quiet, very good. By changing to 2SK170 or whatever Dorsey used, the sesitivity will actually be .5-1dB less than with the original FET. And the self noise only gets 1dB less.
The only way to get more from this capsule would be to use a completely different design, maybe using transformer.

5th June 2005, 05:18 PM	#3
Audiopool Gear nut Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Denmark Posts: 146	I have EXTENSIVE experience with measuring MC012's. I have done this for a local Oktava distributor for some years now. I guess I personally have measured well over 50 pairs, and my colleague another 20 or so. The variations in output is NOT very big. Either you have a flawed pair of Oktavas or your chinese mics have too much (in my opinion) output. Edit: BTW, the typical roll off for the russian MC012 is at 17kHz and around 3dB roll-off until 20kHz. There IS a difference in this respect, but I personally think the balancing is the biggest drawback with the chinese. And of course the assembly - the screws anr only fastened in plastic. I believe that this is not a good design, and that it will not stand the wear and tear of a long lifetime. Edit 2: Are your sure your mixer output are calibrated? Or did you use the same output? Your preamps also shows nasty distorsion in some of the sound files. What kind of mixing board do you use? At a scandinavian forum someone wrote that you padded the mixer whan you recorded the chinese Oktavas. This would indicate a too high output in your chinese Oktavas and this will be a problem when recording loud soundsources, since the mic does not ship with a pad. Edit 3: Since the electronics are the same (apart from some strange values in the chinese mic) and the capsule design similar (although not the same, more about this any day soon. We are dissasembing the capsules now...), I have really a problem with accepting a much higher output even if your chinese Oktavas are defect. The layout is basically the same between the mics, the chinese use differents transistors, but these will NOT give a higher output. Actually the russian FET is, although not very quiet, very good. By changing to 2SK170 or whatever Dorsey used, the sesitivity will actually be .5-1dB less than with the original FET. And the self noise only gets 1dB less. The only way to get more from this capsule would be to use a completely different design, maybe using transformer.