Has anyone done something with one of these mics?

[Canucker]

its all pretty much there in the headline. I ordered one just to mess around and see what happens. http://www.taydaelectronics.com/review/product/list/id/2080/category/115/

[petemoore]

  Yes, they are condensers. 
  When I played around with them they were easy to get working.
  As far as attractive handle/case, feedback rejection or directionality...I didn't get that far.
  But it worked and seemed to work pretty well...with SM58 / LDCondenser etc. here...I just played around with them for a while, didn't really find an application.

[John Lyons]

Made a bunch of these.
http://proxynotconnected.com/2011/05/29/tape-op-magazine-diy-omni-mic-article/

[Jazznoise]

How do those Omnis sound, John? I'm a huge fan of Omni mics - I've an EV635a that I love on trumpet and I currently have an AKG D130 on loan on my guitar cab.

I've used those condensor capsules before for an FM radio project where we had to transmit a signal with a simple circuit design. A pen and some copper for an inductor, a varicap and a transistor and we got to hetreodyning in less than 2 hours. Noisey, but it worked reasonably well.

[John Lyons]

To be honest. I used the Panasonic capsules called for in the build instructions.
I was using them for live, semi binaual recordings. I thought they did really well for
the task. Especially since the whole cost was about $10-$20.
Putting them in tight places around drums to get some grit worked as well.

[Jazznoise]

Just after rememebering there's a rather famous recording Engineer who built a crazy manican with similar capsulses built into the ears, filled the head with dense foam etc. for binaural imaging. He has them placed around the building randomly too and can just patch in. Bit of a mad scientist, think he engineered for The Flaming Lips (Not Friedmann), maybe Polvo or Wilco too.

This stuff goes on my list of projects. Sure is getting long...

[Jdansti]

I've used the Tayda mics configured as in Fig 2b of John's link. Works well with a PC sound card.

[moosapotamus]

I haven't tried the bare-bones tape-op omni, but I did make a number of these a while ago...

http://moosapotamus.net/mics.html



The construction is a little more complex, in comparison, but they probably give somewhat better performance, too.

~ Charlie

[EATyourGuitar]

they are called electret mics. they are more common in objects that are not so new and small. like a office style speaker phone might have one built in. everything you need to know is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electret_microphone

don't let the two wires fool you, these are powered mics.

[Absentidei]

I use mics like these to do binaural recordings.

I take an old pair of earbuds, remove the buds and solder in the electrec mics.
Then I use suguru to make them a bit more comfortable to wear in the ears.

The result is something like this:


These mics require power supplied to the hot lead, but luckily my zoom h1 supplies that.
Otherwise it's very easy to make a little power unit with a 9v battery, one resistor per channel and a DC blocking cap per channel.

[moosapotamus]

I take an old pair of earbuds, remove the buds and solder in the electrec mics.
Then I use suguru to make them a bit more comfortable to wear in the ears.

Maybe I'm reading that wrong, but... why you put microphones in your ears? What are you recording in there?

Doh! Keyword - binaural... I get it!

What is suguru?

~ Charlie

[alparent]

I take an old pair of earbuds, remove the buds and solder in the electrec mics.
Then I use suguru to make them a bit more comfortable to wear in the ears.

Maybe I'm reading that wrong, but... why you put microphones in your ears? What are you recording in there?

Doh! Keyword - binaural... I get it!

What is suguru?

~ Charlie

You need to point the mics outward.
And you can stick some in your nose! I think that's how they did the quadraphonic recordings?

[Absentidei]

Suguru is a kind of silicone putty that hardens when exposed to air, and that's really easy to work with.

And I do point the mics outward.
I've been planning on making a dummy head for a while, but it seems as a bit to much hassle...

[Mark Hammer]

When I used to teach in large university lecture halls, I would always get requests to tape lectures from folks who couldn't make it to class that evening.  This was prior to inexpensve digital recorders, so it necessarily involved tape.

Unfortunately, although the built-in mic capsules in such mini-recorders are probably no worse than the budget capsules like we are discussing here, they a) pick up mechanical noise from the recorder drive mechanisms, b) tend to be recessed into the chassis in ways that are not condusive to good reception of voice, and c) provide outputs so low that the cheap "automatic gain control" circuits in the recorders have the gain cranked.

I stuck a capsule in a little plastic Radio Shack box, with it's head poking above the chassis, to provide a less obstructed path to the element.  I built a little battery-operated op-amp preamp stage to goose the output a bit (the gain may have been something under 10x), and rigged up a little "presence" control on the output that was essentially a bypass cap on a two-resistor passive attenuator.  By having a hot enough signal to keep the gain of the recorder's internal circuit down, hiss was reduced significantly.  In this particular case, since I would be walking around the front of the room, the extra gain was helpful in picking up my voice from farther away.  The better exposure of the capsule gave better frequency response, less boxey tone, and made the difference between S and F, B and P, T and K, easier to to detect when listening to the tape.  Finally, there was none of the constant motior hum in the background because the mic was physically separate from the recorder.

I recently used the same mic to record meetings of a board I was a member of.  Plunk the thing in the middle of the table, and it caught everything.  Probably not better than a PZM, but then much cheaper than a PZM.

[wavley]

To get a little more complicated the Paia stereo mic is a Mid/Side stereo pair, though I'm guessing that they are using the cardioid version of the panasonic capsule because they're using 3 capsules.

http://www.paia.com/proddetail.asp?prod=9506K&cat=27

I'm a pretty big fan of electret omnis as a spaced stereo pair in a room depending on what I'm recording.  I use it less than a Mid/Side or Blumlein pair, but it gets some use.  I keep one of these little omnis in my cistern to use as a reverb chamber and is hands down my favorite mic in this application.

Also, the omni capsule is great for recording acoustic guitar or whatever because of the pretty accurate response and lack of proximity effect.

[birt]

Suguru is a kind of silicone putty that hardens when exposed to air, and that's really easy to work with.

And I do point the mics outward.
I've been planning on making a dummy head for a while, but it seems as a bit to much hassle...

you can easily use a styrofoam head for this. but there is a huge quality improvement if you put ears on it (copies of your own or someone elses). the accuracy of the rest of the head is not very important

[John Lyons]

Just after rememebering there's a rather famous recording Engineer who built a crazy manican with similar capsulses built into the ears, filled the head with dense foam etc. for binaural imaging. He has them placed around the building randomly too and can just patch in. Bit of a mad scientist, think he engineered for The Flaming Lips (Not Friedmann), maybe Polvo or Wilco too.

Bob Weston?
Brian Paulson?

[Jazznoise]

Bob Weston?
Brian Paulson?

Totaly goofed that up, he PLAYED in Wilco. It's Jay Bennet!

http://www.tapeop.com/interviews/41/jay-bennett/ - try and get a copy of the full interview, very interesting. Actually, I recommend any/all americans into recording try and get this magazine. It's mildly technical as AE magazines go, though less and less I find. Same everywhere, really 

Glad to see the love for Omnis. I don't buy the emphasis on cardioid stuff - they're generaly omni below 500 hz and that's where most room modes lie anyway. So all you're doing is making sure all your acoustic problems and your bleed is really really dull. I'd rather the bleed sounded good..

As for the HRTF things - you'd be surprised what makes a difference. I've a freind who does binaural recordings and they never work on me cause he's got short hair and mine goes to my shoulders. Anything he records moving past 4 o clock or 8 o clock stops going behind me and moves above me.

[Kipper4]

I'm a big fan of Jon at Niaint's mics. I have a couple that resemble the earlier photos in the posts.
I havent tried binaural. I do have a jecklin disc though and have played around with it.
I also like to do mid side recordings but with a ribbon mic. Especially if i want a full sound stage from just a single acoustic guitar.
My favorite kind of recording.

[Canucker]

I haven't tried the bare-bones tape-op omni, but I did make a number of these a while ago...

http://moosapotamus.net/mics.html



The construction is a little more complex, in comparison, but they probably give somewhat better performance, too.

~ Charlie

Looks interesting. Did you use the tayda parts for your build? ...and if so, did you have to do the Linkwitz modification? I only added one to my order out of curiosity but I don't want to mess it up!