measurement microphone ?'s

[Pistolpete]

I am a greenhorn when it comes to room sweeping and analyzing and have recently aquired smaart live. I am now in the market for purchasing a measurement microphone but dont have a large budget. I have been looking at the Behringer ecm8000 vs the nady cm100 (both around the 50$ mark), and I am wondering if anyone has any experience or input on eithor of these products. Eventully I will upgrade to a higher end type such as an earthworks but right now I am just interested in an entry level measurement mic, does anyone have any suggestions on mics they have been happy using around this lowball pricerange.

Also what are your inputs on smaart live?....To me it seemed to be rated well by numerous websites and had a lot more functionality than other programs being offered.

Thank you as your information will help much since I am novice in this area.

Pete

oh yeah some other details i forgot....

I mainly work on rap/hiphop/rock genres, I use mackie hr824's for monitoring in room approximately 20'x14 feet, with basstrap on all corners and back ceiling, and behind monitors behind mci 5000 counsel, The middle of the ceiling has a 5'x10' makeshift distortion creation of covered and insulated balsa wood and auralex pyramid foam above the mix postion and the side walls are equipped with fabric covered and insalation stuffed pegboards mounted 3/4" away from wall every 2' apart. The room is pretty much rectangular minus a isoboot in the rear right corner of the mix room.

Thank you again

[Pistolpete]

its a mci-jh500 board...my mistake...its new to us and we havent fully intigrated it yet to our studio...

[tINY]

anything that comes with a calibration sheet (or disk) should be fine.

Make sure you take measurements in several positions and don't rely completely on your apparatus.




-tINY

[Bob Ross]

A bit more than $50 (by a factor of 5x, but still way less than an Earthworks or DPA or Josephson measurement mic) is the IBF-EMM8. Much more accurate (& quieter) than the Behringer.

Also, AudioControl sells a calibrated measurement mic that should street for around $50 & is quite nice, but you have to be careful what preamp you use it with, as it's not designed to work with full 48v phantom.

[dementedchord]

there's also a dbx/jbl cal mic for around $100 that might be better than the behr...

[Pistolpete]

Thank you to all of your suggestions and advice. I will take these suggestions into consideration after i view there charts and specs....

[anxious]

I measure sound for a living, and have compared many inexpensive mics against my references, (factory calibrated B&K, ACO, GenRad). The Behringers are really excellent for a newbie. I keep about a dozen around for field work where they are likely to get trashed. Between these units, there is a maximum of about 1.5 dB of variation above 15 KHz, which should be fine for most uses.

There are other electrets of similar design that are also good, but none as cheap. Next major step up would be an Earthworks. After that, you are talking serious dollars, fragile capsules and routine maintenance.

http://kkantor.spaces.live.com

[tINY]

Anxious,

Do you use transient type signals (MLS) or swept sine? Do you find much difference in spectral decay between the high dollar mics and the cheapies?



-tINY

[anxious]

tINY,

Good point. I'm into time domain effects, so most of my measurements use MLS or chirp/FFT. There are some things that you can't beat swept sine for, like really detailed (unwindowed) nearfield frequency response, or steady-state THD, but they are relatively rare.

Personally, I've never been able to see differences in the ringing between mics much below their diaphragm resonance. (I used to debate this with Dave Blackmer, back in the day.) Of course, if you compare an Audix TR-40 with a B&K 4136, you will see clear differences in both the waterfall and the frequency response at >20KHz. But, I think you would be hard-pressed to find them at 10 KHz.

The other difference I should point out is that I know my good mics are accurate above 120 dB SPL, while the electrets and their cheap head amps, are suspect.

-k

http://kkantor.spaces.live.com

[Pistolpete]

tiny or anxious, or really anyone, is there any books that you could recommend that cover the concepts of room eq and measurements, the process and the understanding behind the process?....I am the type of person, if i dont know it, The more I want to know it and understand it so any help you could give me would be very appreciated. Thank you again for your help. Has anyone used a program called Room EQ Wizard. I read about it in sound and sound as a free download and since i am new at room measurements, Is it a program worthy of using? Any better programs for a novice that will issue good flexiblilty and quality that are not rediculously priced.....up to like 500$ or so would be about my budget right now?...

PistolPete

[anxious]

Pistol Pete,

Although some might disagree, I believe that room measurement and room eq are very different.

Room measurement should be an objective and scientific process: understanding what IS.

Room equalization, at least with present technology, is more of an art form: making tradeoffs based on the engineer's ear and experience, to give the audience/listener the best results.

Of course, it is very, very helpful to have room measurement data in order to do a good job with the equalization. However, different engineers will do different things with the same data. That's why "automatic equalizers" still don't work reliably. They can't make judgements as well as a human can.

-k

http://kkantor.spaces.live.com
www.tymphany.com

[ozraves]

Here are some posts by a research scientist on the subject of measurement microphones. It's good stuff. Enjoy.

http://mojopie.ipbhost.com/index.php...indpost&p=5138

http://mojopie.ipbhost.com/index.php...indpost&p=5139

http://mojopie.ipbhost.com/index.php...indpost&p=5143