Nagra LB - DPA 4060 - Sound Sample of a Forest

[Gaston69]

Hello Jose,

Nagra LB has a MSRP of 2600,- Euros however this is not the street price but the manufacturer suggested retail price.

You have to bare in mind that we pay an average of 20 % V.A.T. in Europe which might be different in the USA.

Nagra VI cost without VAT and accesoires around 5390,- Euros.

Bien Cordialement,

Gaston

[NorseHorse]

Originally Posted by Gaston69

1.) Sound sample of the forest in my back yard using standard DPA SMK 4060 without pop caps i.e. you'll here noise from the wind however listen how 3D the sound field / panorama is.

I have to strongly agree with David Spearritt in his evaluation that the self-noise of DPA4060 makes it unsuitable for ambient location work like your sample. The hiss makes it unusable for me.

This was also confirmed by the 4060 / 4006 comparison you posted. The 4006 is just so much cleaner. After listening, the difference was also confirmed by the technical details: the 4006 is spec'ed for 14dB self-noise and the 4060 is 23dB! This is the reason I wouldn't use DPA's or Holophone's surround microphones that employ the 4060s. Just not suitable for high-gain applications IMO. (I have tried the Holophone; not the DPA though.)

I was actually surprised at the number of favorable responses to the initial samples given that the Earthworks omnis don't seem to get any love around here (which are decried as "too noisy"). But the 4060s have greater self-noise than Earthworks QTC series (22dB)!

The orchestral sample you posted sounds great though. I guess I'd just stay away from using the 4060s on soft-sources.

[didier.brest]

I don't think that the self-noise from DPA 4060 is a so critical issue. The picture here attached depicts the 2 first second silence of both attached recordings made with a pair of Schoeps CMC6/MK21 (white) and a pair of DPA 4060 (red). This was made at home in quiet conditions. The piano is played rather softly in this piece. The microphones are beside the piano tail, 40 cm off the rim, 1.4 m above the floor.

I repeat that the higher noise from 4060 with respect to 4006 perceived from Gaston's guitar-in-church recordings is caused mostly by the 4060 frequency response boost around 8 kHz (see my previous post in this topic). Does this boost comes from the grid removal ?

[David Spearritt]

Originally Posted by didier.brest

I don't think that the self-noise from DPA 4060 is a so critical issue. The picture here attached depicts the 2 first second silence of both attached recordings made with a pair of Schoeps CMC6/MK21 (white) and a pair of DPA 4060 (red). This was made at home in quiet conditions. The piano is played rather softly in this piece. The microphones are beside the piano tail, 40 cm off the rim, 1.4 m above the floor.

I repeat that the higher noise from 4060 with respect to 4006 perceived from Gaston's guitar-in-church recordings is caused mostly by the 4060 frequency response boost around 8 kHz (see my previous post in this topic). Does this boost comes from the grid removal ?

Hi Didier, thanks for the graphs, but this is one area where they are not needed. The 4060 has very clear self noise that makes it unusable for critical concert hall music or quiet nature recordings. What the graphs need to improve their relevance is the overall level ie the RMS addition of all those spectral bins. The red trace is significantly higher in amplitude aross the entire spectrum, and if you plotted the RMS overall level you would see the 8 or 9dBA difference that we can all clearly hear.

[didier.brest]

Hi David,

just listen to the 8 kHz boosted 4006 take from Gaston that I put in my first post above and compare it wity the original 4060 take. You will realize that the noise excess we can all clearly hear from 4060 with respect to 4006 is mostly caused by the trebble boost of the 4006 and that the noise levels on both takes are not so different once one has balanced their spectra. You can easily check yourself that the 4060 has a huge trebble boost with respect to the 4006 on the original recordings from Gaston.

On my files the expected 9 dB difference between the self-noises from the Schoeps and the 4006 can barely seen only at both ends of the spectrum where the human ear sensitivity is low. Elsewhere it is reduced because of the ambient noise of my quiet room received equally by both mics. The unweighted RMS noise level in the initial silence of my both takes is -82 dBFS for the Schoeps and -76 dBFS for the DPA. Indeed there is a difference, which is not IMO a sufficient motivation for rejecting the DPA.

You might also reject the Schoeps because its self-noise is 8 dB higher than the one from an AKG C414B (6 dBA).

Actually 23 dBA is rather quiet. Looking for lower self-noise figures does not make much sense most of the time because the self-noise from the mic is below the ambient noise of the room. This is especially true for any live performance.

[supoUSA]

I'm going to have to start posting some stuff and getting some feedback. But, is it me, or are the 4060 edgy, brittle? That's how I hear them. The 4006's definitely sounds stuffy, but definitely more "accurate" and natural.

Not a bad recording for a conference hall on the other though.

[tsvisser]

did you remove the grids, they introduce a HF boost.

[mosrite]

Finally got round to getting through this thread and having a proper listen (albeit to MP3's).

Firstly, thankyou Gaston for posting these samples. Yours seem to be the only samples of the Nagra LB on the net at the moment and it's helpful to those of us that are considering buying one of these machines.

I mean no offence to anyone when I say that the recording of the forrest was poor. How can a recording be deemed good with that level of noise whether electrical or environmental? I'm all for encouragement but where is the benchmark set if this is deemed a good recording?

I also think that, once again, it had been made blatantly obvious that the little DPA's are pretty useless for all but the most specific of recording situations. I remember demoing a pair and immediately discounting them because of that awful noise. As to trying to fix it in post, nonsense.

I am also a touch concerned by what I am hearing from the Nagra LB. The main thing I seem to be picking up with these samples is a kind of congested and closed sound. I worry that this machine was indeed designed with podcasting and radio in mind and wonder if it really cuts the mustard in a critical recording environment. I am interested in it from a SFX recording point of view and am seriously wondering how it shapes up against the SD 702 but, as yet, noone seems to have compared them.

I have an LB arriving here in the next few days and will try some tests and will try to draw some conclusions. Fingers crossed as I loved the Nagra VI and hope that the LB is pretty much a smaller 2 channel version and not a (recently) re-marketed recorder on a very different sonic level.

[didier.brest]

I am interested in your future results about the LB.

[mosrite]

Got the Nagra LB. Fears quashed. See my 'initial impressions' thread for more info