micparts T-47: A fantastic DIY microphone

Double post. FMR from Texas is awesome. RND from Texas is awesome too.

 

Awesome high tech shit with lots of ics.

RNC and RNLA are great. 4-5x the price for a cooler compressor unless you want a dbx 160a or diy kit or 500 series. About 10-20x the price for a better clean compressor. Maybe half a dozen clean plugin compressors are better. That’s about it. Two of them are code ports from decades old digital hardware like the RNC. Only a couple of them are as good as modern designed $$$$ hardware not trying to be a dirt box or cheap shit.

 

I will agree about Great River and RNC.

The Great River stuff were Neve copies before everyone and their mom were making Neve copies (Warm Audio, Golden Age Project, and a bunch of 500 Series copies) and Great River are still the only ones doing it right with quality stuff inside - toroidal power transformer, Cinemag Sowter transformers in the audio path...and yes, the black face stuff, not the black face stuff. Still The ME-1NV is great if you only need one channel. Note that Warm Audio also makes a pre and Leveling Amplifier with Cinemag transformers in the audio path, but it is just not built to the standard of the Great River stuff.

FMR have been making good stuff for years and also will get you by over most stuff. They know their way around op amps in a way no one else does.

For myself, I use a Focusrite Platinum Voice master. It works great as a vocal channel with noise expander, and opto-compressor. Although it might be a little bright for some, but has plenty of clean gain, and the Focusrite Platinum stuff is stupid cheap in used prices right now.

 

In my 12 track mobile recording rig (100 lbs portable rack) I have:
1 x Great River MP-4, 4 channels total
2 x FMR Audio RNP, 4 channels total
1 x Sytek MPX-4A, 4 channels total
1 x FMR Audio RNC compressor
TT jackfield to allow patching RNC into channels needed

Preamp channel assignment typically went as follows
MP-4 main stereo pair, often ORTF, sometimes Jecklin Disk
MP-4 vocal channels
FMR Audio for bass and drums (3 mic technique)
MPX-4A for piano and anything else

FMR audio is excellent pro audio equipment. Great River was a tad better for main pair and vocals. However RNP would easily serve vocals well.

 

I bought an FMR RNP ages ago at a discount when I needed a mic preamp to use with the audio interface at the time. I put it away when I got a RME Babyface Pro. Considering my less than pure grade audiophile needs from a recording standpoint, the RME worked well enough. The RNP still works although I hadn't used it as much for a while as I did.

 

Would it be excessive/unneccessary to get one of these for streaming?

At some point in the far future I'd like to upgrade my mic setup that I use for streaming (at the moment just a bad USB mic), and I didn't realize DIY would be an option until seeing this thread. This would be a bit cheaper than an SM7B setup and if I ever chose to upgrade I'm sure my interface would end up being the weakest link going forward.

Speaking of interfaces, I stumbled on this DIY design and I wonder if it'd be a significant step up from the MOTU and focusrite interfaces discussed previously. As much as I'd love to use this mic to its full potential if I build one, justifying spending $1000 on an interface when the mic is just gonna record me talking about Mario seems excessive.

I'm still very, very underresearched when it comes to mics, so apologies if these are kinda stupid questions. It seems like the "standard" streamer setup is a SM7B -> Cloud Lifter -> Scarlett/Motu, but it seems like since I'm comfortable with DIY I have a few options at the same price point that would yield better performance. But I'm not sure if I'm experiencing dunning-kruger and this mic (the T-47) would just be absolute overkill for my use case.

 

@3l3tric - You're a bit better served in this thread

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/podcasting-equipment-best-practices.5739/

u47/u87 clones are certainly not cheaper than an SM7B. While I have seen some people use neumann type mics for streaming, the issue is that they are too good and pick up everything. When someone is singing you want to hear the full ability someone has in their voice. But for broadcasting you don't want to hear breathing or other sounds in the background.

Another thing is to get the most out of this, you are meant to record and mix to get the best out of the audio. Streaming has zero post-production. There's a reason you don't see anyone use these mics at live shows.

 

Exactly what I figured, I knew my inexperience was leading to me missing something. Thank you for explaining so clearly, and for the link as well. I hadn't really considered how different podcasting/streaming vocal performances are from musical vocals.

 

I'm curious if you've ever heard of the Mesanovic microphones.

https://www.mesanovicmicrophones.com/

I'm not a big microphone expert, but these are made in Detroit and the prices don't seem too in-the-sky for a small production microphone. I know there's some others. Someone from Nashville makes Alnico Ribbon microphones. Though more expensive than the Mesanovic. On the other hand they do have a $600 version in Neodymium, cheaper than the Mesanovic.

https://stagermicrophones.com/

I'm not sure what's your budget (or of any of the microphones I posted are large-diapraghm, actually). For all I know, your budget might be less than half of any of the microphones I posted. Heck, maybe you weren't interested in Ribbon mikes at all. But I'd thought youd find them interesting.

There's also a bit of info about some obscure Italian mikes from TwoGoodEars, no idea about the cost tho. But they have some Art Deco appeal.

https://twogoodears.blogspot.com/2021/06/tersadia-ribbon-microphones.html?m=1

I don't get paid if you click on any links, by the way. I'm just a lurker who reads a bit of everything.

As a side note, check this out. Quite interesting.
https://m.facebook.com/Ｓatri回路-研究所Satri-Circuit-Laboratory-731313447021293/

It's the Facebook page of Satri Circuit Laboratories, formerly Bakoon. A Kumamoto, Japan company that's the brainchild of a man named Akira Nagai, who has been a pioneer in Current Amplification Circuits ever since he came up with the earliest iterations of Satri (yes, the very same Satri purpoted by Bakoon International (now EnLeum, not related at all; the owner of EnLeum licensed Satri from Nagai-san, they got into a feud over branding a couple years ago, and thus both changed names.)) back in the 80s. You guys love talking tech so I thought you might find the page interesting.

 

All of this is total overkill for you. Why do you even care? Just use whatever

 

Ribbon mics are bipolar, require mega clean preamperage, and are dark. Unless you are recording bluegrass or need another mic to complement your SM57 on your guitar cabinet.

They are also delicate and Coles, AEA, Royer, and even Shure make some of rhe best ribbons. I think MXL makes a couple of cheap ribbon mics, but they have lots of variants between models and just super dark. Only the high end ones are gonna have anything resembling detail.

Talk about nearly the opposite of a U-47...

 

...You aren't wrong I've personally been able to hear the difference between "good" USB mics and XLR mics over interfaces on streams before, so I figured when I get around to upgrading my current mic (a guitar hero pack in mic lol) I may as well spend the extra cash on an entry-level interface setup so I probably won't have to worry about it again. And I've always been pretty into DIY so once I saw this thread I got excited about the prospect of DIYing a mic setup. After reading in the thread Cspirou linked I saw why this particular mic and the preamps y'all were discussing would definitely be overkill in my case.

But hey, at least I'll have this mic and the RNP in the back of my mind if I ever get a wild hair and start trying to record music!

 

Also since it's pro gear you likely have an easier time selling it. Studio engineers and home recording amateurs are always on the look out for good used gear. Heck, even if you fucked up building it they are usually competent enough with a soldering iron to fix it themselves.

 

The most popular configuration is doing this very thing in bluegrass since condensers pick up so much roo noise, so the warm ribbons bring out some body of the instruments and can make banjos sound less ice picky.

However the most popular configuration is combined with an SM57 on guitar cabinet. The ribbon can bring out the body and give it some fullness.

Many Nashville folks around town love the Coles mics as drum room mics close to the floor. However country music is meant to push the vocals forward and the music to the background, so for rock or jazz is not preferred, unless going for that indie 70's songwriter sound, and ribbons as even overheads.

I find the popularity of ribbons interesting because the renewed enthusiasm for them it almost follows digital audio recording and ribbons are a way to "warm up" the cold digital domain.

Side note, my dad, who was in radio for most of this life, swore by those old RCA mics for the warmth and dynamics, until the RE20, and then the RE27, then there was just no reason.

 

FWIW, I contacted micparts and learned that the price of the T-47 will be going up (and it never goes on sale). I went ahead and ordered one.

 

Can you swap k47 and k87 capsules or is the circuitry custom for each capsule?

Dachmann audio has a special right now on their u87 clone kit where an assembled version is the same price as the DIY kit.

https://www.dachmanaudio.com/shop/diy-microphone-kits/da-87-diy-microphone-kit/

it's a bit more than micparts but it also uses a cinemag transformer