Ribbon Mic Audio Samples: before/after transformer upgrade

[GuitarRuss]

I find it interesting that I've picked the cheapest mics in all of these blind shootouts - and so have most of the others.

Am I a tin ear because I prefer these cheap chinese ribbons for their fat sound? I lot of guys with huge mic lockers have shocked themselves by picking these same mics and the 57 before really expensive boutique mics too. It's always funny reading the quotes after they say which mic is which.

Maybe people just find it hard to like these things because they are too cheap. I can see how if you are layering lots of tracks the fat sound will become too muddy and then one of these brighter (unbiased?) ribbons will be perfect but for a single note horn line, give me rich and creamy? And besides, some of the biggest names are now using these mics.

[GuitarRuss]

I've noticed that some sounds seem to be interpreted differently depending on price. Of course, a lot of the time these are true. However, these blind shootouts show that this is not always true. Here's my take on what at times is totally correct, but other times is a bias that should be examined.


Sound...........................Cheap Mic.............................Expensive Mic
Lots of low end ..............boomy/muddy .......................rich and full low end
Lots of high end .............harsh/tizzy........................... detailed with clarity
flat eq ..........................boring/lacks character............ honest/transparent
distortion...................... grainy/unclear........................warm/rounded/rich
needs EQ...................... lacks flexibility........................takes EQ well
Lots of Mids.................. muggy.................................. brings out warmth

etc.etc.

[patrox247]

I prefered the stock.Are you sure the mod was installed correctly?I expected a lot more from the Lundahl.There seems to be some severe loss on the top end, and a complete lack of definition.It sounds to me as though somethings not right.

[Giganova]

Originally Posted by patrox247

Are you sure the mod was installed correctly?

Absolutely positively sure

[drycounty]

To agree a bit more with what Michael was saying, isn't there a real difference between recording 'live' i.e. unproduced sound whether or not it comes from a speaker or instrument and recording sounds that are produced and fully normaled?

Just curious as there is really no test of the amount of dynamics that the mic can handle?

[GuitarRuss]

I'll amend what I said earlier after hearing a shootout that incuded AEA R84.

it had all of the fatness but also carried more subtlety and was a little more pleasing than the fathead it was up against. But I've prefered the fathead to the Royer in a few comparisons.

[timbrewolf1]

Originally Posted by GuitarRuss

I've noticed that some sounds seem to be interpreted differently depending on price. Of course, a lot of the time these are true. However, these blind shootouts show that this is not always true. Here's my take on what at times is totally correct, but other times is a bias that should be examined.


Sound...........................Cheap Mic.............................Expensive Mic
Lots of low end ..............boomy/muddy .......................rich and full low end
Lots of high end .............harsh/tizzy........................... detailed with clarity
flat eq ..........................boring/lacks character............ honest/transparent
distortion...................... grainy/unclear........................warm/rounded/rich
needs EQ...................... lacks flexibility........................takes EQ well
Lots of Mids.................. muggy.................................. brings out warmth

etc.etc.

hilarious!

Same for tube vs transistor anything. I read an article (or a post or something or another) by a knowledgeable tech/engineer saying he could get very close to a tube sound with transistors, that it was more a matter of engineering than the tubes themselves. As I recall he said that if he emulated the engineering he could get the results.

I've wondered the same thing about digital being a ProTools user. A friend of mine, my ex guitar-extrodinaire player, was able to emulate The Beatles ADT (automatic double tracker) in ProTools. I couldn't do it on my antique Mac tho because I didn't have the particular plugin - and the hell of it is, I can't remember what he used now.

What I've read recently is that tube pres sound good because they cause the harmonics to be doubled at the octave. I'm relatively new to the study of this so I may not have this quite right but it would make a LOT of sense.

As always, the bottom line is ears. What I am unable to determine is whether tastes change over time, in terms of timbre, or whether there just isn't enough exposure to good sounds anymore.

I welcome your thoughts on this.

-~wolf

[Igor2012]

Originally Posted by GuitarRuss

I've noticed that some sounds seem to be interpreted differently depending on price. Of course, a lot of the time these are true. However, these blind shootouts show that this is not always true. Here's my take on what at times is totally correct, but other times is a bias that should be examined.


Sound...........................Cheap Mic.............................Expensive Mic
Lots of low end ..............boomy/muddy .......................rich and full low end
Lots of high end .............harsh/tizzy........................... detailed with clarity
flat eq ..........................boring/lacks character............ honest/transparent
distortion...................... grainy/unclear........................warm/rounded/rich
needs EQ...................... lacks flexibility........................takes EQ well
Lots of Mids.................. muggy.................................. brings out warmth

etc.etc.

Yeah, it's unfortunate that so many recording engineers have adopted the mentality of the audiophile community ("my $300 speaker cable sounds more 'open' and 'silky' than the speaker cable you bought at the dollar store"). Anyone who's delved into the subject of psychoacoustics for even 10 minutes knows that while a person's ears may be the most sensitive test instrument around, they're also the most unreliable.

Time and time again when people are asked to pick which mic/preamp/whatever is the most expensive in a blind listening test, they get it wrong. If you were to put up two identical sound files and say one of them was recorded with a Neumann going into a Neve and the other was a Behringer going into a Mackie, I bet there'd be some who would claim to hear a difference.

That said, a couple of days ago I listened to some sound files online comparing modded to unmodded Chinese ribbons in which I could tell that swapping out the transformer had made a difference (scroll down to the part about the ACM-3):
Ribbon Microphones: Audio Icon You Can Build in Your Garage | Raw File | Wired.com

Whether that difference is an improvement, or is worth the cost of the upgrade, is another question. Personally, I preferred the sound of the stock microphone to the one with the transformer upgrade, but preferred the Sank-modified mic to both of them.

I also don't see why it was taken for granted in this particular experiment that dropping a new transformer into a circuit the modder knew nothing about would necessarily lead to an improvement. At best, putting in a new transformer was a stab in the dark. Ribbon microphones are a simple technology and it could be that some of these Chinese imports aren't nearly as bad out of the box as gear snobs who have invested thousands in their mic collections would like them to be. It could also be that dropping the same transformer into a different model of Chinese ribbon mic would've given better results.

[Igor2012]

Originally Posted by timbrewolf1

Same for tube vs transistor anything. I read an article (or a post or something or another) by a knowledgeable tech/engineer saying he could get very close to a tube sound with transistors...

In what context?

I'm not a fan of tubes in recording or stereo equipment and so haven't had much experience with them there, but I can tell the difference between a Fender tube amp and just about any solid-state guitar amp I've played through.

Tube distortion is a real phenomenon that is measurable in a lab, not some audiophile fantasy.

I'm sure that by now there must be some digital emulations of tube distortion that aren't bad, but philosophically-speaking, why would anyone eat beef-flavoured tofu when he could have a steak instead?

[dkelley]

Originally Posted by Igor2012

In what context?

I'm not a fan of tubes in recording or stereo equipment and so haven't had much experience with them there, but I can tell the difference between a Fender tube amp and just about any solid-state guitar amp I've played through.

Tube distortion is a real phenomenon that is measurable in a lab, not some audiophile fantasy.

I'm sure that by now there must be some digital emulations of tube distortion that aren't bad, but philosophically-speaking, why would anyone eat beef-flavoured tofu when he could have a steak instead?

edit: damn.... just noticed that you awoke an ancient thread and I fell into the void also.

LoL

oh well - I'll leave my post here just because I took some time writing it :-)
~~~~

yea exactly. One can make non-overdriven tube and solid state gear sound virtually identical given enough good quality components in each and an ear for that kind of thing (and/or measuring equipment). but using standard solid state circuits will lead to different harmonic content when clipped compared to standard tube circuits. there are solid state circuits that can emulate tube overdrive pretty darn well, but it seems unlikely that this is what that engineer was talking about.

anyway - back on point here. It's well known how audio transformers work and what impact they will have on an audio circuit. The tone of many famous audio transformers used in microphones is also well known and you can sculpt a mic's sound by changing the transformer. some have just bad performance in some ways (phase linearity issues and so on), like the chinese ones in theory exhibit, but for the most part the differences are fairly subtle in these passive ribbon mics. audible, yes, but marginal no matter what. Some won't work with the stock mics.

I use stock chinese ribbons all the time. they pretty much soudn how they sound, and imho cheap chinese ribbons are miles better in their first generation of release (apex 205 etc) compared to the first or second generations of typical chinese condensor mics or even most of the original chinese non-ribbon dynamic mics. (note: imho we're well beyond that now in chinese mic designs and many of their condensors and dynamics are quite excellent).

great times we live in. so much great sound for so cheap.