AuxMix - Showcasing Talent

Hi again,

Another microphone review from Simon again....

Jason from Rainbow Bridge kindly lent BCUC another microphone to test out this one is;

Another NADY one this time its a Ribbon type of microphone and the model is: RSM-2.

Chris took a picture of it on his mobile it looks like this when its all setup:



As you can see from the image above this microphone is a beast! - the image doesnt really do it justice the general size of this thing sets the standard alone hehe.

Another cheeky question is "Does size really matter?" - well do you know what, some people might despute this but I would say it does not....

The Ribbon Mic I used here was just as good as the large diaphragm one but the large diaphragm one was smaller in size.

The smaller one will give you good quality dont get me wrong but to be honest if I had the £350 - £400 I would shell out for this puppy, its Big! and it gets the job done nicely!

Click here to listen to the podcast - lol - done by me and pete. (I'm on the big and expensive mic and petes on a cheepy m-audio mic ;).

Hello AuxMix Readers,

How are you all bearing out? Still visiting the blog then :)

blog by me simon again hehe...

Just letting you know if you need inspiration for your interface for your assignment mine can be found by visting:

mm106h.custompixels.net just remember not to copy or rip the design, all the blog readers will know if you do, ha ha. (sorry evil laugh :P)

NOTE: works well in Internet Explorer, not so well in FireFox.(Before you start moaning about IE, theres nothing wrong with it, if you havent got the balls to secure your PC down enough for IE to find security holes thats your problem.) If you try and run it in FireFox it will ask you for plugins. To cutt a long story short you either need Media Player 9 installed or Quick Time.

currently taking bribes of £1,000 if you want one designed jk :P

Hope your assignments are going well, and everyone remembers the deadline for this friday thats the 31st of March of this year incase people have forgotton.

Dear readers of AuxMix.com,

Another blog once again done by me, Simon

You're getting tired of reading my blogs right, well here is something that may interest / help you when doing part 1 of your theory of sound assignment.

My question for you to think about is: "Does a large diaphragm help, when recording voice?"

Encase you're not aware part 1 is the audio recording of you speaking which is basically an introduction to you're show reel.

Well in today's lab session me and my friend peter tested out two different types of microphones.

They were both capacitor mic's but two different types some links to details about then can be found here:

Below is a link to an expensive one made by M-audio, model is Pulsar, m-audio make some decent equipment don't get me wrong but I will explain more about that later, please click the link below for more information:

Link to m-audio pulsa microphone.

The next microphone I will talk about is a NADY SCM800. This microphone is cheaper but delivers an amazing result which I will talk about in a minute.

Link to NADY microphone.

Ok here goes....

M-Audio Pulsa Mic

The M-audio microphone was less sensitive when talking into it, it was genitive enough to get a great output don't get me wrong but I found it took a lot of effort to get a decent result.

When using the M-audio mic, you couldn't really move around a lot if it was on a stand. By this I mean you kind of had to stand still and talk directly into it without the end result sound really low and faint.

Another thing I noticed when using the M-audio microphone..... - well I am not to sure if it was BCUC's dodgy male to female connectors on our mixing board but when recording while playing yourself back in the headphones it sounded like you were talking down a drain pipe. Although when playing your recording back through your headphones it sounded OK. I say "OK" - because I wouldn’t actually say it was perfect but hey it was, well ‘ok’ you could listen to it lol. :)

NADY SCM800 Mic

Now then.... This was a beast! - for £40 you couldnt go wrong. Who said you don’t get quality for paying a low price :P

This Mic really was business; it was much heaver to hold then the Pulsar one and just generally felt like it would function better then the Pulsar one.

The NADY Mic was really dead easy to set up no need to worry about positioning with this baby as it could detect you from standing anywhere in the booth as it has a large diaphragm :)

My answer to the question I made you think about earlier was "Yes a large diaphragm does help" - it works wonders!

I can't really explain enough how much off a difference this was between the Pulsar microphone - The NADY mic really done the business when speaking while recording it would play back while recording clear and playback after recording just as good.

EDIT: to listen to the audio recording me and pete did with the microphones, please click here.

My advice.... get one! - You can’t go wrong at £40 :)

Dear fellow readers of AuxMix.com,

Simon Hall here again to have another stab at doing some more bloggin for ya ;)

Assignment 3 for theory of sounds & Music Production is moving at a very fast pace now as the handing in date is lurking around the corner.

everything is done basically, even the dreaded report that I just know people are not going to like to write as its a lot of content. Well me personally thinks 3,000 is a lot. But some people are lazy I suppose and choose to write less ;)

My best effort for the assignment has to be my remix of 'One and Only'.

Check it out here.

P.S - Microphone review Blog coming in about 1 hour stay tuned ;) - give me chance to write it lol.

Forgive me community I have sinned, for it has been x days since my last blog.

So the assignment for 106 is coming closer and I’ve seen a great deal of you “beavering” away on various aspects of this beast. It is a large assignment, though most people seem to be discovering some interesting things through engaging with it.

In this blog I want to share another picture with you from my collection (oh so vast) taken at Electronic Arts. The picture in question is particularly interesting as this is a real working scene in progress, which outlines what is known as an emotional line.

What you can see on the bottom of this picture is a line varying in height moving from left to right of the page indicating varying levels of emotion, or excitement/intensity if you like.

Naturally most moving images need sound to convey the emotive content, which is where the maps like this come in to play. Without the audio there is very little emotion at all, very very little.

So my picture below was a sneaky peak at one of the Sound Designers of EA mapping out their emotional line, and ideas for a particular scene, you can see they have added circles with words in which represent the types of sounds taking places at particular moments through the time line.

Lots going on in just this one scene eh? - click it for a larger view.

Well after finally getting one of my assignments out the way today, I can now really concentrate on working on my theory of sound work. Today I have been working on my star wars clip adding effects to it, and a backing track to go with it. So far so good, everything seems to be falling into place quite nicely. I’ve not really used Adobe Premiere Pro so nothing advanced is going on, just keeping it basic. Going to also try some stuff in Adobe Audition as well, to try and make some more effects add some reverb etc to sounds. Thought I would share this website that I have found very useful for downloading some star wars clip and other effect, www.findsounds.com .

So today I popped down to see the Sound Design team at Electronic Arts (EA) located in Surrey, KT16 0EU (see google maps, it's a cool building) and had a fantastic tour around the sound design facilities housed within the heart of the complex.

The building itself is inspiring and takes the breath away. Upon entering the revolving security doors, it's a great great space with a games libary, cafe, games consoles and kiosks.

I have more blogs to post later about other EA stuff.

I guess the picture upload test worked!

I stuck a border=2 on it also.

I’ve woken up late and already half the day has already gone. It’s pouring down hard with rain and I have plenty of work to be getting on with. I walk into university in the rain to drop some books of at the library and hoping to pick up a mobile recording kit that I am desperately after so I can start recording audio sounds for my Theory of Sound project. 2nd day running now and the mobile recording kits are still all out. All is left is a mini disc recorder with no discs, its either that or nothing, so i thought ill give it a try. So it’s off to Dixon’s to get some Mini Disc tapes. With a mini disc recorder and a microphone I track back home in the pouring rain to begin some recording.

So here how it went, I start my recording (well testing anyway) and straight away off to bad a start, got two low batteries, and none of my flatmates have an AA battery to lend me either, so it’s back to the shop in the rain for batteries!!

I begin my testing, recording random things, the television, music, and myself going “Testing 1, 2, 3” continuously.

What did I notice when recording?

Well first off all to get any thing decent from this mini disc player you have to shout, and have the television or music blaring for the microphone to pick up the sound, and have a decent recording.

Problems?

Yes playback, for some reason when playing back the audio I have recorded, it only plays out of one headphone and not both.

Oh for uploading my audio I had recorded, I was given the wrong lead! So can’t upload! So it’s gone back! So I’m left with a pack of 5 mini discs with no use at all.

Anyone else who have used a mini disc player, i h ope you had more sucess than i did!

Hi all,

As we all seem to be getting into blog fever! I better say a bit about myself, my names Peter I’m also a student at BCUC studying Multimedia Technology (Web Design) and once I've finished my degree I’m hoping to get into the web development field, hopefully working for Google!

I'm currently working on assignment 3, for theory of sound and music production; so far so good, got the first section done which is the introduction and hopefully tomorrow I’ll have the sound for publication at least half done!

Perhaps we can get some teasers up on here?

Hi, to all those who are here on auxmix.com.

Kim here , a student at BCUC studying Multimedia Technology Animation. I' m in my first year at Uni, hoping to head into the Game Industry.
I' ll try to update this blog with everything possible to relate to the music side of my course, I' m currently working on an assignment for Theory of Sound which is all practical based, so i shall be getting my hands dirty with the audio equipment that is availale at our University. I will be creating some weird and wonderful sound effects for my audio book, and my video clips. I shall keep you posted on whats happening and hows things are going.

Hello fellow AuxMix fans!

Simon Hall here, encase you don't know me - I'm a student at BCUC and currently working towards a BSc in Multimedia.

This is my first blog, so please don't expect something amazing, just a friendly hello for now, but here is a little teaser for what's to come....

I'm currently working on an assignment for theory of sound & music production - which will be my major showcase showing you skills I have learned so far when it comes to Mixing / Editing and even creating my own sound effects! - threes plently more useful information for this assignment, coming soon....

This blog was sent from an e-mail.

The purpose of this blog is for students and staff to have a place to publish interesting comments and thoughts.