Hi Søren,
In my opinion, second-order ambisonic microphones perform better than
first-order mics in every way.
I suggest that if you are able, to join Facebook's "Spatial Audio in
VR/AR/MR" group. You can ask your project questions there of probably
the most knowledgable immersive sound engineers on the planet.
We can recommend the Zoom F8 (and now the F8n) without reservation. For
under $1000, it provides excellent, low noise pre-amps, very
well-matched channels, and the ability to simply gang channels to ease
the recording process. An alternative is the Sound Devices MixPre 10T.
You can see shipping prices on our ordering page. It's between $78 and
$93 to Denmark. We don't have or collect VAT in the US, so you'd be
responsible for paying VAT to your country's Customs agent.
Len Moskowitz (mosko...@core-sound.com)
Core Sound LLC
www.core-sound.com
Home of OctoMic and TetraMic
Re. Price: the list price is 1999 USD for Octomic and you mention
that it is just a little above Sennheiser Ambeo (which i can buy in
Europe incl. tax AND shipping for 1920 USD at Thomann) Is your price
ex. Tax and shipping?
I live in Denmark.
Med venlig hilsen/Best regards
Søren Bendixen
Composer & Producer
soerenbendixen.com
Den 12. aug. 2018 kl. 20.37 skrev Len Moskowitz :
When selecting an ambisonic microphone, I'll suggest a few things you
should look and listen for.
All of the older Soundfield microphones (all other than the SPS200)
used hardware to apply their calibrations. Each microphone was
individually measured and a calibration correction was built into the
hardware processor.
As the microphones aged, they fell out of calibration. To restore
their performance, you had to send the microphone and the processor
back to Soundfield for re-calibration. This was expensive, and
ideally had to be done every two or three years. When Soundfield went
through multiple changes of owndership, the knowledge to re-calibrate
(and even to initially calibrate) was lost.
With the introduction of our TetraMic in late 2006, the hardware was
no longer needed. We calibrated each and every TetraMic individually
and provided a calibration file that was applied with an A- to
B-format encoder plugin.
Soundfield later came out with their SPS200. Instead of providing
individual calibration files for each SPS200, they initially matched
all the capsules at the factory to the same standard, and then
provided a single generic calibration correction that they expected
would work for all SPS200s. It turns out that as the capsules on the
SPS200s aged, a single generic calibration file couldn't possibly
work for all of them. And they never offered a re-calibration
service. Eventually, based on what we've measured, they lost the
ability to even match the capsules correctly initially at the factory
- eachone is very different than the next.
The result of using a single generic calibration correction file is
that they can't correct for a lot of things. One of them is
divergence at low frequencies. So what they did was to cut off the
SPS200's low frequency response at around 90 Hz. The Sennheiser Ambeo
takes the same approach, and it also has a 90 Hz low frequency
cutoff. The new Rode mic (as of yet unreleased) seems to follow the
same approach.
And of course, as the capsules age, even if they were well-matched
from the factory (which SPS200s are not now, but Ambeos seem to be),
after two or three years, they will not be.
Neither Soundfield (now owned by Rode) nor Sennheiser offers
re-calibration services.
SPS200 and Ambeo are first-order tetrahedral array microphones.
TetraMic is Core Sound's first-order microphone. It is probably the
best-selling first-order microphone in the world. Each one is
individually calibrated. Re-calibration is recommended every two to
three years. Low frequency response goes down to below 30 Hz. (We've
calibrated them on special order down to 10 Hz.) It's calibration is
tuned to sound like a DPA 4003.
First-order tetrahedral arrays are good for some things, but they're
weak at others. If properly calibrated, its pickup patterns are
better than pretty much any mono mic. But its listening sweet spot is
only about the size of a human head. Outside of that you'll start to
hear some loss of localization cues. Its localization cues are not
particularly strong, which is why the VR industry tends to use them
for ambience, but supplements them with spot mics for stronger
localization cues.
Second-order ambisonic mics have a much, much larger sweet spot, and
much, much stronger localization cues. They can synthesize
second-order pickup patterns that have much more directional
selectivity, rejecting much more sound from unwanted directions. That
let's you get at least twice as far from the sound source as a mono
mic without losing directional selectivity. (Mono mics are limited to
first-order pickup patterns; they can't do second-order patterns.)
Our OctoMic is the only second-order mic being offered commercially.
It's priced only a little higher than an Ambeo. We suggest that you
have a look and a listen.
Len Moskowitz (mosko...@core-sound.com)
Core Sound LLC
www.core-sound.com
Home of OctoMic and TetraMic
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