Episode: 1003
Title: HPR1003: My audio gear
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1003/hpr1003.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 17:12:24

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Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hacker Public Radio, I'm Nido Media and I'm
here to tell you something about my recording gear.
I'm not a professional with microphones in by any means, I'm just the obvious like
most of us and I got myself this setup because I wanted to make better sounding recordings
than did I with my $5 headset.
I actually recorded two songs with it and it actually worked so if you tried one to record
but you don't have proper microphone just use your headset, it'll work.
So I went looking for a microphone.
I went for a normal analog microphone instead of a USB microphone because I also have
some other analog equipment which I wanted to record as well and the USB microphone
registers as a USB sound card so it will give you problems if you try to record it together
with another sound source because they both have a different clock.
So I went looking for advice on buying a studio microphone and the short of it was get
the Shira SM58 or SM57 or otherwise you get what you paid for.
I wasn't quite ready to fork over 100 euros more or less for one of those yet so I looked
what was available locally and checked out YouTube to find some clips of some test recordings
of the microphones I wanted to buy and that at least gave me an idea of the maximum quality
I could ever hope to achieve with that particular microphone.
I settled on the Baringer Microphone C3 which is a lower end microphone but still according
to me works pretty well, it's the one you're hearing right now.
This microphone is a condenser microphone which in short means that it needs phantom
power in order to operate.
It is connected to the rest of the system using an XLR connector which is a connector which
has three pins, two signal pins over which you can send the differential signal and the
ground pin.
Now condenser microphone needs power in order to operate so they invented phantom power
which means that they put 48 volt signal on both signal pins.
So the difference between each of the signal pins and the ground pin is 48 volt.
However you are sending a differential signal over the cable and it's a different differential
signal between the two signal pins which are both 48 volts themselves so the difference
is about zero so you can actually measure the actual signal.
There are some other types of microphones for example a dynamic microphone which works
more or less like speaker but in reverse.
There is another type of microphone which is the ribbon microphone which works on the
principles of electric induction and since the actual signal level of a normal microphone
is about 50 millivolts if I recall correctly.
Trying to ramp up the signal pins up to 48 volt in one go can actually damage those kinds
of microphones.
So I got a condenser microphone which needed phantom power.
I got myself a little phantom power supply box also by Beringer which is a PS400 which
works.
It has an XLR input for the microphone and another XLR input on the other side for the rest
of the equipment.
I got myself a cable from XLR to a regular jack mono because it's a mono signal and I already
had a connector myself which turned that into a normal mini jack connector which you
can actually plug into the computer.
So I got all that and I plugged it into my lining connection and nothing.
Well not really nothing but there was something of a signal far far away in the noise which
I could somehow maybe connect as coming out of my mic coming into my microphone but certainly
nothing better than the 5 dollar headset I mentioned earlier.
Getting it into the microphone connector didn't help much either because the microphone
connector of a computer works different than a normal mono signal.
The mini jack connector which you use for the microphone as the tip sending the signal
as a normal mono connection does and the sleeve is connected to the ground but the ring which
is usually the opposite on a balanced connection or the other channel in case of a stereo connection
is a 5 volt signal over which there are 5 volts so that's not doing much either.
So I did some research and it turned out that the microphone needed a microphone preamp.
The chip is usually found on amplifiers and lucky me I had an electro pro 127 which had
a microphone input with a microphone preamp.
So instead of plugging the microphone directly into the computer I now plugged it into the
microphone in of my electro mixer and put the recording out signal from the electro into
the line in signal on my computer pump the volume all the way to the max and it actually worked.
However I didn't reach my goal just yet the sound was pretty distorted and the output from my
5 dollar microphone was still better than my increasingly expensive setup which I have obtained
to replace it. So I did some more research and some measurements with a friend of mine and
eventually decided to make yet another purchase which is a phonic AM55 which is another mixer
and the electro itself is a mixer but it is primarily a DJ mixer and the microphone input
is not really meant for recording purposes whereas the phonic AM55 is more suited to it and
actually has a XLR input so it can accept the differential signal which is actually sent over
the XLR cable and it is the system you are hearing right now. It was a great improvement over
the electro because where before I could barely hear myself talk if I was pretty close to the microphone
whereas with the phonic I could actually walk into another room close the door talk and still hear
it on my recording. From the AM55 signal then goes into the Creative X via USB device which I got
from my father. It works pretty well in my opinion it works with Linux so yay but it is the next item
on my list to replace. It only has one stereo input which I sneakily use as a dual mono input
by panning the signal on the microphone hard to the left and the input of a line input for example
my guitar hard to the right and record the two signals as mono which works quite well.
From that I input it into my computer via the USB cable and I record it in order I am actually
running the beta version of order 3 and while I am still developing the process because I don't
really understand everything in order just quite yet let me give you a run through of how I use it
at the top you have a stop start record back forward a metronome button and some other ones I
don't quite understand and in the middle in the bottom you have the master you have tracks
you have the master track which is the output in essence and under that you can put multiple tracks
at the moment I am usually using only the microphone channel but in some cases when I am recording my
guitar I have a direct output from the guitar which I can also plug into my funnig mixer and I do
the pen left pen right trick I described earlier and I also record it on my microphone so I have two
recordings of the same instruments and I can later combine them together. Next up is my favorite
at the moment which is the mix menu which you can get by pressing alt M and then you get pretty much
mixer interface you have all your channels which you also have when you look at the main menu
and you have also the master channel at the right the heart right but you have the fader which
is the little thing you can pull up and down and control the volume width you have effects which
you can insert into the pot before you activate the fader and you have input effects or you can
input after the fader when you right click when within that black box you can insert new plugins
and you have a favorite menu which is a default it's empty but you can manage it with the plugin
manager thingy and then there's a list by the creator and by category and well it's there's all
kinds of stuff there well actually with art or itself there's nothing but it interfaces with
the lotspar plugins and well under dora and I guess you boon to they automatically install
those plugins when you install art or I suggest you just get all the plugins you can get because
even after six months I still don't have any plugins which I really like and juice all the time
and so experiment give it a try if you want to record well that's how you do it just go
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