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Post by phrazemaster on Oct 5, 2015 23:30:54 GMT -6
might even be more savvy to get an ex-studer tape machine designer to design it? 8) After faking a moon landing, faking analog tape should be easy (LOL!). They didn't fake the landing!! They faked the launch.
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Post by phrazemaster on Oct 5, 2015 19:19:28 GMT -6
Wow bannedChuck! Amazing!
Um, why/where were you banned and why is that your moniker?
Anyway, stellar job man!!!!
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Post by phrazemaster on Oct 4, 2015 23:52:54 GMT -6
I built it PTP according to a schematic - first time ever tried a PTP and thought I followed everything quite well. The PSU was a 3rd party vendor's offering, quite good, and quiet. Based on an EF12 circuit designed by AG.
I also used high meg resistors by Ohmcraft, shinkoh where I could find/fit it, and a Vishay bulk foil. I'm not immune to audiophoolery.
On powerup, she worked "OK" but then I noticed something disturbing...she wouldn't take moderate to high SPL's at all, offering a buzzing or almost kazoo-like sound, even below clipping. Uh oh.
After much mucking about, replacing components, redoing the High-Z section, changing the bias voltage, and many conversations at GDIY and with the man, Andreas Grosser, AND after mucking up my capsule and damaging the rear with an errant fingernail scratch, I finally asked for help. Mr. Grosser offered to upgrade the whole shooting match to conform to using a 105V supply and also his VF14EF substitube. (get it? tee hee!).
Anyways, I shipped her off to Germany last week, for a whopping $180 bucks. I had to ship the Mic, the PSU, and the cable. I'm fairly excited, especially to have the VF14EF as well as the original circuitry for the mic. It's a FleA body so she wasn't cheap!
I'll share results here when I get her back. Hopefully with something exciting to share!
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Post by phrazemaster on Oct 4, 2015 23:15:50 GMT -6
Is it just me, or does anyone else find 763 different versions of the software corn-fusing? They seem to be following microsoft's lead and IMO producing WAAAAY too many variations. I'm just a composer/singer/songwriter. I don't have all day to track all their updates (pun intended). I just wanna make music.
IMO, you offer 2-3 versions, PERIOD! But they've got their "rolling updates" and I just saw some freaking thing called Ipswich version (hth does that compare to the other 73 versions?) etc etc etc...
I think they've gotten away from their core competency and I do believe they will totally fracture their market, which is already happening because I don't want to wade through all the hype to figure out why I should bother to upgrade. Maybe it's time to look more seriously at Reaper...
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Post by phrazemaster on Oct 4, 2015 22:56:21 GMT -6
I don't use orchestral stuff for much more than roughs, so I use one of the Kontact libraries. I can double out the trumpet parts myself, which adds some realism. But it's usually orchestra + guitar + synths and the density also hides my lazy/cheap attitude towards this. What I will say is a lot of people mainly mess up is how to write for orchestra. If you want it to sound "Classical" and you can't do the appropriate voice leading and range + dynamic range use of each instruments, then you're already in trouble. Likewise if you want something more modernist, that has its own set of rules. I studied it for a number of years and you'd be surprised how much more believable an orchestration can be if you actually voice your Ic-V-I cadences correctly. I have to give a +1 for the voice-leading comment. I have a buddy who spends a lot of time writing orchestral scores, and they end up ok-mediocre at best (though I would never tell him that!). His problem is he doesn't know how to do voice leading. He probably has a lot of parallel 5ths/octaves and breaks other rules, but he never gets a very realistic sound. I lay no claim to greatness but I do get much better results with the same sound sets as he does, merely by dint of following what Bach et al laid out for us lo these many hundreds of years ago... And full disclosure, I'm laughably using a library for Sibelius called NotePerformer that does a bang up job of automating phrasing. I was recently asked what orchestra I hired to produce a score, so with a bit of composition work you can get good results from lots of libraries I'm sure!
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Post by phrazemaster on Oct 3, 2015 20:19:44 GMT -6
I DIY'ed a bunch of SoundSkulptor stuff, including their Stereo Tape Simulator. It's a box that lets you dial in various amounts of tape sim using supposably real tape recorder electronics, or clones of them. It was a fun build btw. I've gotten mixed results, no pun intended. Sometimes I convince myself it sounds a bit bigger and cooler with it on a vocal; other times I bypass and end up liking the sound right out of my M49 clone into the Lavry Blues. I do find it hard to use because it seems on the lowest possible setting it still oversaturated sometimes, and I end up using it on 1 out of 10 on input and then 10/10 on output. Then I'm rather bummed because it's no cheap thing, and I want to use it but it ruins some sources (or I ruin them with my use of it). From the website: "The STS includes the electronics of a classical tape recorder with variable gain input stage, pre-emphasis stage, recording amplifier, constant current driven tape head, playback amplifier with 6dB per octave attenuation, NAB de-emphasis stage, filter emulating the effect of head gap and differential output stage. The heads and magnetic tape behavior is simulated by the magnetic core of several coupled coils. The STS can simulate the tape recorder rolling at 3 different speeds: 7.5 ips, 15 ips and 30 ips. The tape speed modifies the bandwidth and the saturation of the magnetic core."
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Post by phrazemaster on Oct 3, 2015 20:11:20 GMT -6
Should be interesting...
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 28, 2015 0:34:21 GMT -6
This is so disheartening. I was already grousing about iTunes $0.99/song, with Apple keeping 20-30% off the top. As if all our hard work is worth 79 cents...sucks to try to make money from business being a writer right now...
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 27, 2015 20:36:18 GMT -6
I broke down and I'm ordering a Blueline.
Between all y'all's great comments, Max Kirchner at GDIY saying he thinks the Bluelines are great, and Svart's astute comment that the "average opinion is usually right" (reminds me of Occam's razor for science!), plus, well, the much lower hit on the pocket book, I'm going Blue!
I'll try to remember to report back here my impressions in a few weeks after I get mine and have it installed in my upcoming U47 clone of Max's, the MK-U47.
Thanks!
Mike
PS - oh yeah, another deciding factor - in discussions with Andreas Grosser, he said he likes the Bluelines even better than some vintage M7's!
I wanna see AG and Klaus duke it out lol!
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 26, 2015 22:01:28 GMT -6
That's pretty badass!
This is one of those products that's so awesome, and so "obvious" in hindsight, it feels like, "why didn't I think of that" or "you mean no one ever thought of this before???"
Wow!
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 24, 2015 23:49:54 GMT -6
Well my new PTP ?U47 has hit a thud! Distortion even at low levels of preamp, below actual clipping. Tone is nice and mic is dead quiet, but I have to solve this somehow...working on it. Thanks for sharing your feelings on the M7 stuff everyone.
Sorry I just saw there was another whole page so adding to to this post...
To Martin - man you are talented!
To Small, good points on the M7. I'll probably get a blueline unless I can source a real Befell M7 pre-2000.
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 22, 2015 1:41:27 GMT -6
By the way, I'm just finishing a PTP U47 mic, with a FleA body, and a Thiersch Redline capsule. I'm still tweaking it, but the preliminary results are VERY GOOD!!! Using an EF12 tube and a Grosser PSU. Gotta love those original Tuchel connectors...wow, so cool looking, and so smooth!
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 20, 2015 18:30:07 GMT -6
One more point, but one that's a bit hard to admit. We all want the gear we build to be incredible. So there's that psychoacoustic thing going on too.
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 20, 2015 18:29:04 GMT -6
I hear you Small,
I don't know what a real M7 sounds like. So it's hard for me to know. I just read someone's post recently wherein they built a C12 and threw a cheapie Chinese capsule into it. He was thrilled. Then he decided to put one of Tim Campbell's specials into it instead.
He said after he had Tim's capsule installed, the difference was so great he would have just thrown away the Chinese capsule if he didn't need it for testing purposes.
Maybe it's a matter of what you've experienced. I imagine the Blueline must be pretty good, or as one poster stated at GDIY he built an IOAUDIO MK-U47 and shot it out against some real U47's. The studio owners were so impressed they commissioned him to build some MK-U47s for him. He said the sound was indistinguishable.
So it's hard to know. Klaus might be right; I really don't know.
Best,
Mike
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 18, 2015 19:20:07 GMT -6
Good points Kcat. I don't think Klaus sells capsules, but I hear you. I suppose he is used to dealing with the best of the best. I do trust his opinion, but as you say, "consider the source" and what that individual might have to gain in sharing an opinion. In this case, I do think Klaus is entirely honorable.
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 18, 2015 9:50:53 GMT -6
Got a message from Max Kirchner at the other site; he is actively working on an M7 recreation! Here's a quote (moderators if this violates anything - sorry! Welcome to remove...) From Max: "Hey Mike, indeed I'm working on my take on the M7 capsule, on and off since nearly three years now. I'm experimenting with all kind of different PVC films in various thickness, often sourced from outside EU for regulation issues. I have come close to what i want it to sound, a pristine original Berlin M7 i use as a reference, but there's still a small difference, and i want to get it 100% right. Testing is done by myself and by three sound engineers who have a U47s with original M7 capsules. I recently found a Swiss manufacturer for specialty films and they will send me a couple of samples next week, I'll make an appointment with the research lab for the gold evaporation after that. I have a good feeling with the new film but we'll see." Thread page found here: groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=50694.580
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 17, 2015 21:29:04 GMT -6
+1 for Dan!
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 17, 2015 17:01:21 GMT -6
Well to me the most depressing part was that the K47/K49 capsules are not consistently excellent anymore - at least not up to his standards. Plus since Oliver passed, the planned test to recreate the M7 with the old illegal PVC powder apparently will not happen.
But we are still here. I'm sure the M7 is still very good, at least for the unwashed masses. Yet it's a shame that there is nothing that actually is an agreed-upon replacement that is universally hailed as excellent...
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 17, 2015 16:46:08 GMT -6
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 16, 2015 23:58:47 GMT -6
Thought maybe you'd like to see a couple pix of the PSU that took me 9 months to build (build, tear-down, then rebuild!, plus a shot of the sexy FleA housing...I know it's spendy but everytime I use her, it's luxurious! Attachment DeletedAttachment DeletedAttachment Deleted
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 16, 2015 23:54:32 GMT -6
Not to cross-post; just thought to share a link to an interesting discussion I had with Klaus the last couple days on the State of M7s. Actually it's a depressing discussion, but I'll leave it at "interesting" in the title. repforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/topic,36846.0.html Mike
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 15, 2015 12:43:22 GMT -6
Ok, samples posted! No comments about the craggy vocals! It's the last 3 on the link below. Or you can listen through my grinding attempts to arrive at the quiet. Arrive at Quiet... Quietude Yep, there's a song or an album name there somewhere! soundcloud.com/phrazemaster/sets/diy-m49-test
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 15, 2015 12:29:07 GMT -6
I have some good news to report!
She's working! No hum! No hiss!
SHE SINGS!
Apparently she needed a good dry, 24 hours, and after I fired her up I reset voltage for plate to ~43V, and gave her a test...very, very quiet!!!!
Anyway to all that followed, thanks. I'll post another sample of the noise floor, and a vocal, and you can heart the difference.
So all the guys out there who have gear that acts wonky...don't give up! Take time, come back to it later if you're frustrated, ask for help, but don't give up!
Samples will post a little later today.
Best,
Mike
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 14, 2015 17:55:37 GMT -6
OK. Redid the grounding a bit on the PSU, and I redid the grounding a bit on the mic as well. The HUM is GONE!!! Only now...there's HISS!!! And it got worse after I carefully cleaned the Hi-Z section of the mic. Now it sounds like a hissy tube (AC701K) - it didn't before! Here's a sample of the noise now - last track. soundcloud.com/phrazemaster/sets/diy-m49-testAny suggestions? Best, Mike
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Post by phrazemaster on Sept 14, 2015 12:26:36 GMT -6
Thank-you Svart. At wits-end to troubleshoot. Have rebuilt PSU completely, and routed all audio wires away from AC lines. Also used shielded cable connections inside the PSU, and grounded the shields too. Not sure how to proceed. Sigh.
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