Sony ECM-MS957

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RobbyVT

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I am having an issue with a laptop/pc picking up sound from this microphone (Sony ECM-MS957). I know there isn't anything wrong with the mic because when I use it with my minidisc it picksup great. Can someone give me any suggestions. Do I need an adapter? I would like to use cooledit software to record with.
 
Are you running it through a preamp? If you are running it straight into your soundcard...that could be your problem...not enough gain.
 
Wish14 said:
Are you running it through a preamp? If you are running it straight into your soundcard...that could be your problem...not enough gain.
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What is a preamp? sorry I am new to this stuff.. is it expensive?
 
Hold the horses! Sony ECM-MS957 is a battery powered electret mid-side stereo mic (a rather good one). It uses a very boogered-up (that's a technical term) multipin cable that terminates in a 1/8" stereo miniplug. It is a stereo mic, and only a stereo mic. Because it has a built in mid-side decoder, it is necessary that input and output levels for the 2 channels be identical, or you will hear all the noise that is being phase cancelled. Don't really worry about that right now- I'm just explaining the technical stuff so the people on this board will not give you useless advice, which has happened so far. This is because that is one weird mic, and all the assumptions made so far are wrong.

It can be done, but first, yeah, it will cost some money. The first thing is that laptops and PC's are completely different animals, because of the type of soundcards they accept. In this case, you might do better to start with an interface that uses USB. Both the PC and the laptop will have a USB port, and you only need 2 channels. In any event, you will need a 2 channel preamp, but using a USB interface will save you from having to buy a separate soundcard that will only work on the PC anyway. Then you will need a collection of weird adaptors to get from the stereo miniplug to the 2 male 3-pin XLR connectors that the mic inputs on the preamp are looking for.

Hre's how I did it. First, go to a big mucking Guitar Center or similar, Radio Shack, etc., probably won't have all of what you need. They make a Y-adaptor with a stereo female miniplug that goes to 2 male RCA jacks (like the ones usually used on a home stereo). Then you get 2 female to female RCA adaptors. They will be wicked cheap. Then you get 2 unbalanced male RCA to male XLR cables and....voila! You have gotten from a male stereo miniplug to 2 male XLR's. As far as I know, the only other way to do that is to be very good with a soldering iron, know more than you know about electronics, and build the damn cable yourself.

Here's an inexpensive example of a USB interface that will do the job-

http://www.8thstreet.com/product.asp?ProductCode=12031&Category=Audio_Interfaces

Is it worth it? Yes. The ECM-MS957 is a great mic, and you're going to need a preamp anyway. Then you can use the preamp with any mics you get in the future, you can switch it back and forth between the PC and the laptop easily. Good at home, good for mobile recording. Building the Frankencable I described will allow you to use the 957 with any preamp. Back to what I said before- make sure that the input and output levels of the 2 channels match each other exactly. If you don't believe me, just move either level control up or down, and you will immediately hear a bunch of nasty noise that the mic is cancelling out. I use the 957 with my Korg PXR4 Pandora for a micro remote unit, and I built the Frankencable to plug it into my studio preamps. That little mic is good enough to see a lot of use in my studio, once I figured out how to plug the damn thing into a regular mic preamp. Best of luck. Feel free to PM me if you get confused. ECM-MS957 tech is one of my stronger suits.-Richie
 
Richard Monroe said:
I'm just explaining the technical stuff so the people on this board will not give you useless advice, which has happened so far.
Click to expand...

Useless advice? He doesn't need a preamp? What was useless?

:p
 
Sorry Wish, I didn't mean to offend, only to point out that he has a mic that won't plug into a standard preamp, and a laptop that won't accept the soundcard that the DMP-3 is looking for. Now the issue of the soundcard/laptop/preamp is one that is well known to lots of people, but this mic is really largely unknown, which is too bad, because it's a really good mic. My apologies.

One quick note- I got a couple of adaptors today which shorten and simplify the frankencable. It's Livewire GXM-133. This is a simple adaptor with a female RCA at one end and a male XLR at the other. So- all you need is the female miniplug to 2 male RCA "Y" adaptor, and 2 of those, and the connection is made. This shortens the amount of cheap cable involved. If you need it longer, you can attach whatever high quality mic cables you want to the XLR's. The cable that comes with the SONY is only 3' long. Of course, using the Y adaptor requires unbalancing the signal, but that's OK, because the mic's M-S decoder reverses the phase of the figure 8 lobes, which results in almost the same noise-cancelling effect.-Richie
 
Would this work??

I know this wouldn't be perfect, but before I got my 002, I tried recording into the minidisc using a stereo mini disc mic with record and pause on, and a stereo mini jack coming out of the line out on the minidisc into the line in on the computer sound card - audigy soundblaster. It seemed to work fine, with no real latency issues... Minidiscs do compress the sound a bit apparently, but it still sounded fine for trying out ideas etc.

I'll probably get shot down for suggesting this byt what the hell.... :D

Dan
 
Hey Dan, he's got nothing to lose by trying. The results might be better than you think. The 957 was meant to record to a minidisc, so the impedence matching of the little preamp is probably pretty good. Of course, the preamp is what it is. When I'm hard up for channels, I often use my Korg PXR4 as a preamp for a talkback mic. I jack the mic into the PXR4, and the line out of the PXR4 into the aux in on my headphone amp. That's pretty similar to what you are describing. I'm not saying I would choose the 957 as a talkback mic, and of course, it isn't being recorded, but what the hell, it might work. The issue is two-fold- One, how good is the preamp in the minidisc, and two, does he have a decent soundcard? The problem of the soundcard doesn't go away because you've figured out how to plug the mic in.-Richie
 
Richard Monroe said:
Sorry Wish, I didn't mean to offend, only to point out that he has a mic that won't plug into a standard preamp, and a laptop that won't accept the soundcard that the DMP-3 is looking for. Now the issue of the soundcard/laptop/preamp is one that is well known to lots of people, but this mic is really largely unknown, which is too bad, because it's a really good mic. My apologies.
Click to expand...

No worries! You definitely had the cabling issue down that I had no clue about.

It's all good!

:)
 
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