Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

general questions, comments and ideas about recording, audio, music, etc.
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tommypiper
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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by tommypiper » Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:36 pm

I haven't seen how the XLR connector is mounted on the HRM 4, but it could be awkward and add additional weight and leverage that the hanging cable would apply to the mic in its yoke, thus making postioning awkward. A flexible cable coming out of the body instead makes this easier. We're used to this with vintage ribbon mics.

You should be able to loosen the cable from the clamp at the bottom of the yoke to allow more slack and moving the mic within the yoke. Having the flexible cable instead of an XLR may make the mic easier to use and position, (and with a figure 8, positioning is often important). One more reason to choose HRM 2.

Close ups I've seen of the cable are showing a four conductor, stout cable, plus two ground wires/shields. It looks surprisingly good. (HRM-2 cable.) It's probably not a star quad, but still four conductors is good. Better than some Mogami I have. And you can certainly replace it, or snip it short, this is Tape Op afterall...
Last edited by tommypiper on Wed Feb 09, 2005 10:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by trodden » Wed Feb 09, 2005 6:44 pm

Aloha everyone,
i've been on vacation for the past week and missed out on the deadline. so if there is anyone out there looking to split up their order. please pm me and i'll try to pay pal you some cashish when i get back to see-at-tuhl before i spend it all on coconut shell monkey coin banks and hand carved tiki dolls here in paradise.

mahalo,
Trodden

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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by NeglectedFred » Wed Feb 09, 2005 7:48 pm

Should I be worried?

I sent my credit card info via Email (tried to call Saturday, but they were closed) and I have not yet been billed?
I eat glue.

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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by Madguitrst » Wed Feb 09, 2005 8:15 pm

Michael Jolly stated:
This request may have gotten lost in the middle of thousands of posts but I strongly urge you to order the HRM-2 style head grille if possible and not the simpler cylindrical HRM-4 style.

The 3 dimensional taper of the HRM-2 grille will reduce internal standing waves to provide a flatter more accurate and more transparent high end.
Michael, I've read your previous threads at rec.audio.pro and they were very interesting.

What I'm wondering is this:
Have you tried one of these mics (in any form) yet?
Are you that sure that the tapered grill would be better?
Isn't there more to the grill than just the shape, such as the material it's made of, the size and shapes of the holes, what's behind it, etc.?

Re: shape of the grill - an opposite example is the Oktava MK219 vs Oktava MK319.
The 219 is tapered and 319 is cylindrical, yet everyone (including you) says the grill desing of the 219 is faulty and so the design change for the 319.

Also, when you did your tests with the ML52 you changed a whole bunch of things, such as the transformer, etc......no small detail. Did you test after only the grill change?

Michael, I'm not trying to be negative in any way, I'm just curious. You've done some excellent work but I dnon't know that it was with the mics in question.

Please get back.......I'm anxious to hear your thoughts.

I recommend anyone interested check out Michael's post on the Oktava ML52 ribbon mic at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec ... a968f8c06e
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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by syrupcore » Wed Feb 09, 2005 8:55 pm

HRM-2 please. known(ish) quantitiy.

will

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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by Madguitrst » Wed Feb 09, 2005 9:03 pm

Okay,

I've taken a little bit of time to think about this some more and here's my thoughts:

There are some high end mics with tapered grills, many more with cylindrical. Some of the most expensive mics these days are cylindrical. Some are totally different, such as lollipop mics. My point? There's no way you can say the cylindrical shape alone will have a negative impact on the mic and that the taper itself of the grill will have a positive impact.

I need proof!!!!!!!!!!! Ahem...........

If Michael hasn't tested this mic in it's various shapes (2 vs 4 or the Nady vs the T.Bone) then we simply can't go by the theory of one shape vs another.

So far, these are unknowns. Based on other mics, if I had to pick a shape, I'd say the cylindrical shape would be best.

What the knowns are: Cheap mic cable is never a positive....never. Neither are broken mic cables. Decent mic cables, such as Canare, are better for rejecting noise (I doubt the attached cable is as good as a Canare, but who knows, really). Changing a broken mic cable that is attached isn't my idea of fun. Many times I prefer to have mic cables plugged into a preamp and leave them there, preferring to change the cable at the mic......can't do that with a fixed cable.

All in all, I say we go for the HRM-4 with the removable cable unless someone can say with some certainty that the tapered grill is better.

All for the four say I..............

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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by earl parameter » Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:14 am

I

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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by ubertar » Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:29 am

I'm still with the HRM-2, but I believe the word you want here is "Aye", not "I". Aye = Yes (as in "Aye, Aye Capitan").

And while we're on it, it's "Hear, hear", not "Here, here". Just a little pet peeve of mine. :D

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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by lifeintime » Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:29 am

ubertar wrote:I'm still with the HRM-2, but I believe the word you want here is "Aye", not "I". Aye = Yes (as in "Aye, Aye Capitan").

And while we're on it, it's "Hear, hear", not "Here, here". Just a little pet peeve of mine. :D
Hear, hear Capitan!!!

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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by ubertar » Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:49 am

LifeInTime wrote:
ubertar wrote:I'm still with the HRM-2, but I believe the word you want here is "Aye", not "I". Aye = Yes (as in "Aye, Aye Capitan").

And while we're on it, it's "Hear, hear", not "Here, here". Just a little pet peeve of mine. :D
Hear, hear Capitan!!!

Yes I am a pirate
Two hundred years too late
The cannons don't thunder
There's nothing to plunder
I'm an over fourty victim of fate
When I was in college, there were two Pauls in my circle, so my friends called me "R". I played a show, and recorded it, and in the background you can hear my friends shouting, "R! R!". Sounds like a bunch of pirates.

MichaelJoly

HRM-2 vs. HRM-4 Grill Discussion

Post by MichaelJoly » Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:56 am

Madguitarist ?

Thanks for the kind words and thought provoking questions.

I thought about starting a new thread to answer your questions (since they?re technical and not strictly about ?buying instructions? as the title states) but since we?re discussing a technical issue that informs the decision process about which mic the group wants to by, I'll stick with this thread and use a Q&A format:

Q: Have you tried one of these mics (in any form) yet?
A: I have not heard or worked with either the HRM-2 or the HRM-4.

Q: Are you that sure that the tapered grill would be better?

A: I am positive that the tapered grill will distribute internal standing waves across the upper frequency spectrum better than a cylindrical grill. Is this better? In my view, yes. Because in microphones, I generally prefer the sonic results of decisions that favor reduced resonance over increased-resonance conditions. (Though in musical instruments I prefer resonant-increasing conditions - a preference for archtop rhythm guitar as opposed to dreadnaughts for example)

Consider the difference between the cylindrical grill of the Neumann U47 vs. the much larger and tapered grill of their M49.

There were many design decisions that came together fortuitously in the U47 to produce a remarkable transducer for many applications. That mic, along with the Telefunken ELA-M251 and AKG C12 are probably the three best known and loved examples of cylindrical grill designs. However, early literature for the U57 and U67 tout the ?improvements? made possible by Neumann?s new tapered grill design.

Recently, it has been written that Neumann designers wanted to create a head basket and grill design in the M49 that would be as free from upper frequency colorations _due to internal reflections_ as possible. They 1.) designed a largish basket to lower the frequency of internal standing waves reflections and thereby make higher frequencies less subject to comb filtering effects, 2.) used a 3 dimensional tapered grill design to distribute standing waves across frequency and make them less correlated to sound source direction, and 3.) used a maximum open area grill design to further minimize remaining reflections between the grill, capsule and surrounding surfaces in the basket.

So there have been and are now great sounding cylindrical grill mics. The presence-boosting qualities that are more pronounced in a cylindrical grill help the capsules and electronics of the U47, 251 and C12 work the magic they do. But if you wish to have a microphone that is more neutral than peaked, a largish tapered grill is going to take you there better.

Q: Re: shape of the grill - an opposite example is the Oktava MK219 vs. Oktava MK319. The 219 is tapered and 319 is cylindrical, yet everyone (including you) says the grill dressing of the 219 is faulty and so the design change for the 319.

A. The grille problem of the Oktava MK-219 has much less to do with its shape than the execution and materials used. The ?219 suffers from severe internal reflections within the head basket because the horizontal slotting provides so little open area. This is exacerbated by the fact that the head basket is on the small side ? just large enough to accommodate the large diaphragm capsule. As a result, internal reflections occur in a portion of the high frequency range where our hearing is most sensitive to phase and time anomalies. In fact, when the MK-219 is modified by cutting out the horizontal slots and removing one layer of grill screen the result is a much more open, clear and resonant free high end. And the taper grill accounts for this. (I actually prefer the sound of a properly modifed '219 to a stock '319)

The MK-319 was developed in part to alleviate the problems of the restrictive ?219 head basket design (and, being market driven, in part to look like a U47). It was successful in reducing internal reflections to a level lower than the ?219 but can be improved still by removing one layer of grill screen to create more open area.

Q: When you did your tests with the ML52 you changed a whole bunch of things, such as the transformer, etc......no small detail. Did you test after only the grill change?

A: I studied design engineering under dbx / Earthworks founder David Blackmer ? a great scientist and really pragmatic test-and-measure engineer. My work on the ML-52-02 was done one step at a time in order that I might test only one variable at a time. So yeah, I tested and measured the ML-52 stock, with the slots cut out, with a new stainless steel grille installed, with the silk removed, with one layer of grill screening removed and finally with a new single layer of brass screening installed. The trend toward better, clearer high frequencies occured when a minimum of reflected material is in proximity to the ribbon motor.

By the way, there are qualitative differences between head grill mods and transformer mods. Head grill mods primarily affect upper mid to high frequency clarity (time domain) while the transformer mod extends low frequency response and reduces low and mid frequency distortion (frequency domain).

Hope this explains why I'm an advocate of minimal head basket reflections and how a tapered grill helps achieve that.

Thanks again for the questions, this was fun!
Last edited by MichaelJoly on Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:26 am, edited 5 times in total.

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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by nipsy » Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:09 am

dudes, these are cheap ass ribbon mics, not the holy grail........

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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by junkstar » Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:30 am

We will have to have a song fight when we get these mics in. Tunes cut 100% with the Cheap Ass Ribbons.

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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by Huntlabs » Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:45 am

Other than the shape of the grill and the detachable "PENIS" / Cable...

Is there any difference at all between the 2 and the 4???

If you say yes or no hows about posting a F-ing link to support your position.
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Re: Pacific Pro Audio Ribbon Group Buy Instructions

Post by darjama » Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:30 am

The only electronic difference between the two is the attached cable. The only other difference the plant informed me of is the grill design.

Again, pictures of both are here:

http://city-state.net/ribbon/

All this has been gone over several times before, but there are so many posts in several different threads, it's easy to lose track.

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