Rode engineer on microphones

[normen]

Just found an interesting bunch of videos in the "EEVblog" video blog series. The EEVblog is the "Electronics Engineering Video Blog", done by Dave Jones, a professional Electronics Engineer from Australia and highly recommended if you're into electronics. For a few videos he invited the former head engineer of Rode to give an introduction to microphones.

So these videos are giving more of an engineers angle on the whole topic without any of the typical undertones in the pro audio world (great for vocals, typical bass drum microphone etc.), intended for electronics engineers or actual microphone technology beginners, quite an interesting watch.

Dunno if the above actually links the whole playlist so heres a direct link to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihAG6cM ... DEIN7T5Vt8

[normen]

Heh, just watched this again and my favorite quotes are:

"Well transformers are.... Lets just say the same people who like transformers also like tubes."

"Why don't all microphones have flat response and then EQing is done after the fact?" - "Well everybody knows its cheating if you do it in the DAW, if you can't do it with a room full of 10,000$ vintage microphones - whats the point??"

[alex]

Great quotes!

Another one that I like is taken from the same site you mentioned sometimes ago, (http://microphone-parts.com/ which is really interesting BTW) and it says:

We believe microphones are essentially EQ devices.

[normen]

Hehe, true in a way. Talking about linearity, I recently got two microphones from a Swedish one-man-manufacturer which are simply amazing for their price, they cost only about 100€ (without tax) and easily rival mics in the 1000€ range. Its a wide cardioid so its very kind when you have "moving targets", e.g. acoustic guitar or accordions.

http://www.lineaudio.se/CM3.html

You can buy them here:

http://nohypeaudio.com/lineaudioproducts.htm

[alex]

Oh, another thought about transformers.

Few years ago I've read an interesting article about the so called "tube distortion". It turns out that tubes cannot distort and were never meant to be distortion devices when they were invented, but the exact opposite! In fact, based on that reading, they were (are) the most linear and clean amplification devices ever made. In a tube circuit the element that really distorts is the output transformer which clip the signal if the tube gain is pushed hard because its(tranfsormer) input has lower range (this is true only for some tube circuit design, IIRC). According to the article, the "tube distortion" myth is possibly born decades ago, when some tube guitar amplifier models, when pushed hard, produced a "distorted" sound that was considered more pleasant that the solid state counterpart, and people start to think that tubes where superior! But that was about distortion and not about clean/linear amplication range! Then the marketing and the history have done the rest.
But the point was: if the tube is chosen because is a perfectly clean (linear) amplifier then, pushing it (or designing the remaining circuit) so that its transformer distort (i.e. enters in the "non linear" behaviour) makes no sense at all! (Unless, obviously, this is what you want, but then distortion or "colour" becomes a matter of taste...).

I'm not an electronic engineer but that's what I understood/remeber from that article.

Sorry for deraling thread

[normen]

Fact is that basically ALL "classic" or "vintage" gear that nowadays is sought after because of its "color" was built to AVOID exactly the things that "color" implies. The engineers back then tried to build the best, most low-noise, low-distortion etc. devices they could with the available parts. Same is true for the base electronics - tubes were made to amplify and cleanly so. But they do have limits and will simply not amplify the signal beyond a certain point - and thats exactly what is causing distortion. Basically distortion is like a compressor with very fast attack and release, the "dents" in the wave are what translates to the overtones which in turn make up the distortion, how the dents look exactly define the character of the distortion.



So yeah, the distortion per se is only happening when you drive everything to its utmost limit which might have been necessary in the olden days of recording because you can only get so much gain with one tube. I also suspect that many engineers simply noticed that when they drive the preamp hard the whole mix comes together more easily because you effectively put compression on the single tracks which might be why in old recordings you often hear distortion in the single parts. These days we have huge amounts of clean gain with the preamps and super clean compressors for the level control and if needed more than enough options to put distortion on the tracks as well if we feel somethings missing..

No worries about derailing, the mix of science and hands-on experience (and the misconceptions on both sides) is what makes the whole audio engineering thing so interesting

Funny story about distortion that is going around in german audio engineering circles is when Jimi Hendrix was to record a "live on radio" kind of thing at the NDR - an official TV/Radio station in Germany with only highly educated engineers working there.

So for the sound check / rehearsal Jimi turned up his amp and started playing - after the song the engineer came out of his booth and turned down the gain on the amp. When he went back to the booth and sat down Jimi proceeded to turn up the gain again. They did this a few times back and forth until the engineer said: "Uhm, Mr. Hendrix, if you don't turn up the gain so far you won't get that nasty distortion!" Obviously Jimi laughed his ass off and the engineer learned something about art vs. the science supporting it

[selig]

Oh, another thought about transformers.

Few years ago I've read an interesting article about the so called "tube distortion". It turns out that tubes cannot distort and were never meant to be distortion devices when they were invented, but the exact opposite! In fact, based on that reading, they were (are) the most linear and clean amplification devices ever made. In a tube circuit the element that really distorts is the output transformer which clip the signal if the tube gain is pushed hard because its(tranfsormer) input has lower range (this is true only for some tube circuit design, IIRC). According to the article, the "tube distortion" myth is possibly born decades ago, when some tube guitar amplifier models, when pushed hard, produced a "distorted" sound that was considered more pleasant that the solid state counterpart, and people start to think that tubes where superior! But that was about distortion and not about clean/linear amplication range! Then the marketing and the history have done the rest.
But the point was: if the tube is chosen because is a perfectly clean (linear) amplifier then, pushing it (or designing the remaining circuit) so that its transformer distort (i.e. enters in the "non linear" behaviour) makes no sense at all! (Unless, obviously, this is what you want, but then distortion or "colour" becomes a matter of taste...).

I'm not an electronic engineer but that's what I understood/remeber from that article.

Sorry for deraling thread

[normen]

Uh Giles, did you mean to say something?

[selig]

Uh Giles, did you mean to say something?

Yes I did - don't know what happened there - all quote and no response!

I meant to say I was at a forum with many top microphone preamp designers where it was said you can build a clean tube amp or a dirty solid state amp - the "color" is a choice you can make, not strictly dictated by the topology.

Also, you can overdrive the input to a tube gain stage and thus overdrive the tube right? You can ALSO overdrive a transformer. In fact, as far as I'm aware you CAN overdrive any component in an analog signal path. Everything has it's limits…

[normen]

Yes I did - don't know what happened there - all quote and no response!

I meant to say I was at a forum with many top microphone preamp designers where it was said you can build a clean tube amp or a dirty solid state amp - the "color" is a choice you can make, not strictly dictated by the topology.

Also, you can overdrive the input to a tube gain stage and thus overdrive the tube right? You can ALSO overdrive a transformer. In fact, as far as I'm aware you CAN overdrive any component in an analog signal path. Everything has it's limits…

Oh totally, though the choice of electronic parts was limited back in the day, as was their performance. But these days its basically just down to your engineering skills - like Doug Ford in these videos explained how he used a tube in the NT1000 basically because he needed a "JFET that runs on 120V" Theres loads of solid state amplifiers / preamps for guitar (i.e. meant to overdrive) that do what players came to love about tube distortion - though in the last few decades they became somewhat eschewed again. Its true though that nobody could predict what exactly would distort when guys like Hendrix and others before him started to "mistreat" their gear and run it out of spec