4 ms·

I remember when I volunteered at the little local radio station, that it was always working hard to soundproof booths, and putting carpet on the walls for acous

I remember when I volunteered at the little local radio station, that it was always working hard to soundproof booths, and putting carpet on the walls for acoustics, and scraping money together for decent microphones. Nowadays, when seeing webcasts of some radio shows, I'm surprised about the flimsy mics, sometimes headset-mics, they're using, and the sort of environments they do live shows from, without seemingly giving away much in terms of audio quality (for speech, announcements, that is). I get they're all behind sound processors, but still...

1-6 4y ago
DSP's have a way of making analog devices obsolete. E.g. DSLR vs Smartphone wars. If you can't tell the difference, consumers will aim for cheap and microphones are no different. I'm still surprised that we run XLR cables and snakes all over stages. There should be CAT6 runs and cheap and open source Ultra Low-Latency tx/rx units by now.
- ofalkaed 4y ago
  CAT6 would not last on stage for very long, even the robust heavy cable and connectors used on stage need to be regularly repaired and replaced. The expense for most of the stuff used on stage is in making it durable enough to have a decent lifespan. Stage life is very hard on gear.
  - dsr_ 4y ago
    Agreed: CAT6 ruggedized to the required degree would cost the same. Then you would need POE to power the ADC and DSP at the stage end, which would also need to deal with microphone interfaces which have remained compatible since 1950 -- so there's 73 and counting years of working equipment that people already have. You can get nearly all the benefit at the cabinet end of the cable runs.
  - datpiff 4y ago
    > CAT6 would not last on stage for very long, even the robust heavy cable and connectors used on stage need to be regularly repaired and replaced. The complexity of digital solutions doesn't help either. A huge amount of maintenance in current systems can be done with just a can of contact cleaner, an ohmmeter and a soldering iron. I can't imagine anyone wants to add problems with configuration, addressing, EMI etc.
- kimburgess 4y ago
  As sibling comments have noted, there's durability issues with this for stage use, but this is absolutely the path that a lot of installed audio has gone: Dante/AES67/AVB mics, DSP's with minimal local IO and even direct PoE+ speakers. As an example collection: https://www.shure.com/en-ASIA/products/microphones/mxa920 https://www.shure.com/en-ASIA/products/microphones/mxa920 https://www.biamp.com/products/tesira-compact-audio-dsp https://www.biamp.com/products/tesira-compact-audio-dsp https://www.qsys.com/products-solutions/q-sys/audio-network-loudspeakers/nl-series/nl-c4/ https://www.qsys.com/products-solutions/q-sys/audio-network-...
ofalkaed 4y ago
It is not difficult to get good clean sound just about anywhere, just use a highly directional mic with poor sensitivity, which is what headset mics and the mics journalists use for field work are. It may not provide an accurate representation of the speakers voice and much of the nuance may be lost but often it is good enough especially when the listener does not actually know what the person sounds like. Many of the mics sold for pod casting are of this sort.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > It is not difficult to get good clean sound just about anywhere, just use a highly directional mic with poor sensitivity… The "sensitivity" thing is a popular myth among podcasters. Headset mics use higher-sensitivity condenser mics, but because they're so close to your mouth, ambient and background noise is proportionately far quieter. More reading on this topic: • Myth Busted – The Too Sensitive Condenser Microphone: https://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2009/12/30/myth-busted-the-too-sensitive-condenser-microphone/ https://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2009/12/30/myth-busted-the-t... • 15 Popular Audio Myths (see section "Myth: Capacitor mics ‘pick up more of the room’ than dynamic mics"): https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/15-popular-audio-myths https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/15-popular-audio-m... • Top 8 Microphone Myths Exposed (see item 6, which also applies to dynamic vs. condenser): https://www.shure.com/en-US/performance-production/louder/top-8-microphone-myths-exposed https://www.shure.com/en-US/performance-production/louder/to...
  - ofalkaed 4y ago
    I was not talking about capsule types which you seem to be conflating with sensitivity. The 1khz/1Pa test is nearly useless on its own and generally in the studio when the engineer says this mic is more sensitive than that one, he is not talking about the sensitivity measurement on the box, he is talking about the sensitivity measurement in context of of the pattern and frequency response for a given setup. Edit: that is too say I was not talking about the sensitivity measurement on the box either.

1-6 4y ago

DSP's have a way of making analog devices obsolete. E.g. DSLR vs Smartphone wars. If you can't tell the difference, consumers will aim for cheap and microphones are no different. I'm still surprised that we run XLR cables and snakes all over stages. There should be CAT6 runs and cheap and open source Ultra Low-Latency tx/rx units by now.

ofalkaed 4y ago
CAT6 would not last on stage for very long, even the robust heavy cable and connectors used on stage need to be regularly repaired and replaced. The expense for most of the stuff used on stage is in making it durable enough to have a decent lifespan. Stage life is very hard on gear.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  Agreed: CAT6 ruggedized to the required degree would cost the same. Then you would need POE to power the ADC and DSP at the stage end, which would also need to deal with microphone interfaces which have remained compatible since 1950 -- so there's 73 and counting years of working equipment that people already have. You can get nearly all the benefit at the cabinet end of the cable runs.
- datpiff 4y ago
  > CAT6 would not last on stage for very long, even the robust heavy cable and connectors used on stage need to be regularly repaired and replaced. The complexity of digital solutions doesn't help either. A huge amount of maintenance in current systems can be done with just a can of contact cleaner, an ohmmeter and a soldering iron. I can't imagine anyone wants to add problems with configuration, addressing, EMI etc.
kimburgess 4y ago
As sibling comments have noted, there's durability issues with this for stage use, but this is absolutely the path that a lot of installed audio has gone: Dante/AES67/AVB mics, DSP's with minimal local IO and even direct PoE+ speakers. As an example collection: https://www.shure.com/en-ASIA/products/microphones/mxa920 https://www.shure.com/en-ASIA/products/microphones/mxa920 https://www.biamp.com/products/tesira-compact-audio-dsp https://www.biamp.com/products/tesira-compact-audio-dsp https://www.qsys.com/products-solutions/q-sys/audio-network-loudspeakers/nl-series/nl-c4/ https://www.qsys.com/products-solutions/q-sys/audio-network-...

ofalkaed 4y ago

It is not difficult to get good clean sound just about anywhere, just use a highly directional mic with poor sensitivity, which is what headset mics and the mics journalists use for field work are. It may not provide an accurate representation of the speakers voice and much of the nuance may be lost but often it is good enough especially when the listener does not actually know what the person sounds like. Many of the mics sold for pod casting are of this sort.

CharlesW 4y ago
> It is not difficult to get good clean sound just about anywhere, just use a highly directional mic with poor sensitivity… The "sensitivity" thing is a popular myth among podcasters. Headset mics use higher-sensitivity condenser mics, but because they're so close to your mouth, ambient and background noise is proportionately far quieter. More reading on this topic: • Myth Busted – The Too Sensitive Condenser Microphone: https://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2009/12/30/myth-busted-the-too-sensitive-condenser-microphone/ https://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2009/12/30/myth-busted-the-t... • 15 Popular Audio Myths (see section "Myth: Capacitor mics ‘pick up more of the room’ than dynamic mics"): https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/15-popular-audio-myths https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/15-popular-audio-m... • Top 8 Microphone Myths Exposed (see item 6, which also applies to dynamic vs. condenser): https://www.shure.com/en-US/performance-production/louder/top-8-microphone-myths-exposed https://www.shure.com/en-US/performance-production/louder/to...
- ofalkaed 4y ago
  I was not talking about capsule types which you seem to be conflating with sensitivity. The 1khz/1Pa test is nearly useless on its own and generally in the studio when the engineer says this mic is more sensitive than that one, he is not talking about the sensitivity measurement on the box, he is talking about the sensitivity measurement in context of of the pattern and frequency response for a given setup. Edit: that is too say I was not talking about the sensitivity measurement on the box either.