Group Buy Interest?

  • Thread starter Thread starter chance
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
crazydoc said:
Thanks a million, chance. I am happy as a pig in shit with the mics, and well worth twice the money, so don't get me wrong, but the build quality on the HRM 14 leaves a lot to be desired.

Mine had a rattle when I opened it - screw loose inside. I took the mic apart and put the screw back (transformer mount.) But the upper and lower front and back panels, which are supposed to snap in, were glued in with contact cement, and one of the snap lugs was broken off.

I made some slight modifications and it all fits together well now, but mechanically this may not be a long lasting mic.
Click to expand...

My HRM 14 was the same as yours although I was able to snap open the black cover, find and re screw the screw, and then snap back the cover although it took a few times to get it back straight. I haven't tried the mic out yet but hope too in the next couple of days. :)
 
chance

I'm emailing you the photos.

Did you know you can right click on the images here (and on many websites) and save them to your computer as jpegs? (at least with Windows OS - I don't know about Mac.)

Thanks again for everything. I'm sending you a little gift by snailmail.

If there's another group buy, I'd be interested in some of the mic capsules in the catalog, not to mention another mic or five, especially multipattern tubes.
 
FWIW Chance, I had a screw rattling around in my HRM-14 as well. It was one of the screws which secure the transformer mount to the inside of the body. The fix was about a 2 minute job with no ill effects. Great mic otherwise.
 
ermghoti said:
Regarding the "front" on the HRM 10's. I notice that on both mics, the XLR jack pins are arranged with one pin centered on what would be either the front or back, I wonder if this is a side effect of the hardware, or a designation of directionality?
Click to expand...
By viewing the logo on the HRM-15 on a certain distributor's website, in relation to the body screws, I was able to determine which side of the mic the logo is on, presumably being the "front side".

I don't know if this translates to the other mics, or if it even matters except to be able to reproducibly set the mic up, as the two sides differ in frequency response.
 

Attachments

  • hrm15_logo.webp
    hrm15_logo.webp
    20.6 KB · Views: 189
That is a tasty lead. I am going to do the DIY mic tests today, I'll see if that XLR-orientation-to-front trend holds true.
 
Is there any way, looking at the ribbon itself, to tell the difference between front and back?

BTW I posted a WAV file to an A-B comparison of my HRM-10 to a MXL2003. I would be interested in other A-B tests.
 
I looked at a few of my mic. 4033, V67, a couple of other China mic and I noticed the XLR is mounted with the single pin in the back.
 
Innovations said:
Is there any way, looking at the ribbon itself, to tell the difference between front and back?

BTW I posted a WAV file to an A-B comparison of my HRM-10 to a MXL2003. I would be interested in other A-B tests.
Click to expand...


Where did you post these wav files ?
 
I got to use the 10's on a session the other night. The song is by a singer/songwriter I'm working with. Her guitar was recorded with the 10's on either side of her about 2 feet away going into a Toft ATC2 pre to a Studiomaster P7 mixer then to Tascam DA38. The guitar also took a direct feed through an Avalon U5. Vocals take 1 Studio Projects T3 to a Peavy VMP2. Vocal track two I did with the T3 and the HRM 10 side by side. The T3 pan left and the 10 pan right. Also did a whisper track with just the HRM10.
Nice smooth sound through the 10's. They are a great intro to using ribbon mics.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=194851

The song is called "drink up"
 
HRM-10 Front Question Solved

I conducted my first experiment with M/S stereo recording and learned that the side with the pin is the 'front' of the HRM-10. At least if you define 'front' as being in the same phase with a cardiod at the same location.

(The other thing that I learned is that you have to get the two mics really close if you are going to get a good M-S recording.)
 
One thing I am noticing with my HRM10 is that the signal seems to be stronger in the positive direction than the negative direction. It is not a matter of offset since recording silence is right at 0. Is this some feature of the ribbon or fig-8 pattern or is there something wrong with my usage or the mic itself?
 
Innovations said:
One thing I am noticing with my HRM10 is that the signal seems to be stronger in the positive direction than the negative direction. It is not a matter of offset since recording silence is right at 0. Is this some feature of the ribbon or fig-8 pattern or is there something wrong with my usage or the mic itself?
Click to expand...
As I observed last week, these mics are definitely NOT symmetrical in their figure-8 patterns. There is a distinct difference in timbre between the two sides, and this may well show up as a difference in level as well. Note that this is not uncommon in figure-8 mics, and in particular it is true of the Royer 121 on which the HRM10 is patterned. Here is what Royer has to say about this characteristic of their mic: http://www.royerlabs.com/2in1.html

Royer also says that this difference only exists for sources that are close to the microphone (within 3 feet), so my earlier concern that the HRM10 may not be ideal for MS use may prove unfounded.

Under normal circumstances, I would have considered the brighter, stronger side of this mic to be the front side, but if the HRM10 follows the Royer pattern, it may be that this is actually the back side. Without a logo on our mics, it is hard to tell which side is which. (But I see that you've done some experimenting to make that determination.)

BTW, Nady's manual for this mic (their RSM-3) also notes the difference in character between the two sides. And, I must also note that the Nady version has a street price of about $270, which is between three and four times what we paid - even including all transportation and handling charges. Pretty good deal, I'd say!
 
Last edited:
My Shure 315 also has asymmetrical response, probably due to the design of the ribbon motor assembly, which is not symmetrical about the Z axis. Interesting that Royer filed a patent on it, since it's been done for probably 60 years or more, whether a "happy accident" (nice Bob Ross ref by the way) or not :rolleyes:
 
Gilliland said:
As I observed last week, these mics are definitely NOT symmetrical in their figure-8 patterns. There is a distinct difference in timbre between the two sides, and this may well show up as a difference in level as well. Note that this is not uncommon in figure-8 mics, and in particular it is true of the Royer 121 on which the HRM10 is patterned. Here is what Royer has to say about this characteristic of their mic: http://www.royerlabs.com/2in1.html
Click to expand...
Note this is exactly what I pointed out with the pics of the HRM14 in this post earlier in this thread:
https://homerecording.com/bbs/showpost.php?p=2003674&postcount=519

I really doubt if it is patentable, as it seems to be an inadvertent consequence of poor construction technique that has been going on for years.

"Let's just put this happy little ribbon in here." :D
 
Gilliland said:
Royer also says that this difference only exists for sources that are close to the microphone (within 3 feet), so my earlier concern that the HRM10 may not be ideal for MS use may prove unfounded.
Click to expand...
I am using this mic at about 8 inches from my mouth so this may be just a matter of an up close effect and possibly relating to proximity effect, which the mic seems to have a bunch of.

BTW, Nady's manual for this mic (their RSM-3) also notes the difference in character between the two sides. And, I must also note that the Nady version has a street price of about $270, which is between three and four times what we paid - even including all transportation and handling charges. Pretty good deal, I'd say!
Click to expand...
yes I think that is the big thing here. I am feeling like I did when I got my first LDC mic, getting used to the new quirks of this tool and learning what is normal and what is unexpected. Figuring out what ribbons are about on a Royer or AEA is as much of a waste as learning about condensers on a Neumann.
 
Following up on the asymmetric response.

I rotated the mic 180 degrees and sure enough, when speaking in the back the peaks were higher in the negative than the positive. The effect was definitly more pronounced up close. So I agree that it should be fine for M/S recording,
 
Gilliland said:
As I observed last week, these mics are definitely NOT symmetrical in their figure-8 patterns. There is a distinct difference in timbre between the two sides, and this may well show up as a difference in level as well.
Click to expand...
Here's a follow up to my own post, and one that is probably well worth noting. I (along with several others) reported on the significant difference that I heard when speaking into the two sides of these mics. But today I read a thread on rec.audio.pro that probably explains at least part, and maybe most, of what I heard. I had never considered this possibility, yet now that I read about it, it makes a great deal of sense.

The original poster said this about testing the two sides of a figure-8 mic: "When simply speaking into it, I notice that with the pattern set to F-8, front and rear of the mic sound rather different, the rear mostly lacks bass..."

The responder said this: "You are no doubt listening with headphones for this test. It is quite normal, and the microphone is no different front and back. What is happening is that you hear a mix of head sounds and air sounds (from the phones). With the mic facing one way they are in phase, the other way they are out of phase, and you hear diminished bass."

Another responder expanded: "Speak into the front, and the sound in the headphones will (normally) reinforce what you hear through bone conduction and acoustical leakage through your headphones. Speak into the rear, and you'll get cancellation from the same sources."

So this clearly is at least a partial explanation for why we hear a difference between front and back on our ribbon mics, and as you can see, it actually has nothing to do with the mics! If you record your test, though, and listen to the playback, you should get a better idea of the real difference between the two sides of the mic.

So that's pretty cool - I learned something new today. Unfortunately, I'm out of town at the moment, so I can't reconstruct my tests. Maybe over the weekend.
 
If any one following this thread is interested I just posted an HRM-14 in the classifieds. :)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top