At 1:20 AM -0500 2/22/04, Walter Knapp wrote:
ref:
>
>The one that comes to mind is the Sound Professionals SP-CMC-4 or
>thereabouts. It's based on the Audio Technica AT853 mics. About the same
>sensitivity and self noise as the other suggestions at 7mV/PA and 28dBA.
>And it's small, can be had to power off minidisc's plug in power, a
>battery box, or phantom power, or all three. But the real sleeper here
>is that the capsules are interchangeable, there are omni, subcardioid,
>cardioid and hypercardioid capsules that just screw on. A whole kit of
>mics that would fit in a single mic pouch. Though each capsule pair will
>run you $80.
>
>The Sound Professionals SP-CMC-6 slimline version also has
>interchangable capsules, even a mini shotgun, but is 30dBA self noise
>with 10mV/PA and a higher price. It's also a Audio Technica mic. It
>looks like the capsules of the two series are electrically
>interchangeable, so that shotgun might be adaptable to the SP-CMC-4
>series with some machining of a adapter.
>
>
I too noted that that the manuf's specs for the AT835 were better
than the ECM-44's [32 dB(A) self noise and 10 mV/Pa sensitivity]. We
bought one to try and I did a left/right channel comparison between
the AT835 and the Sony ECM-44 and the AT835 had much more noise, very
evidently, grungy, full bandwidth. I sent it back. Its possible I
could have gotten a lemon but I'm suspicious of AT's specs based on
some of their other mics I tried too. I'd bet that the ECM 55 is
probably a better mic, even the Sound Professionals model SP-BMC-2
based on the Panasonic WN-61A caps probably sound better than the
AT835 and cost half as much. I know the Pana capsules are very close
in quality with our ECM-44's. We don't buy the 44's anymore, we make
our own pana cap pairs for $15 each. Sound Professionals does a nice
job of mounting them though.
They might work out an arrangement to let one buy both to see which
works better, the pana cap model is:
http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/category.cgi?category=110&item=SP-BMC-2&type=store
If you can afford them, I think Klas' em-23's are MUCH better than
any of these p-i-p mics in terms of noise and gain. and they are
quite small.
Rob D.
= = ==
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