Did you (or anyone else) ever get their mikme? Any reviews / impressions?

I’m about to get to the vocal tracking phase of my album, but sadly at the same time I also need to be traveling for about a month straight. At home I have a nice U87 and an Apollo rackmount and etc, but obviously those aren’t traveling on the road with me.

I recently (for unrelated reasons) got a Zoom h4n Pro as well, but I have concerns it’s not really cut out for studio quality vocal recording… Am I wrong? Or maybe I should bring my U87 with me and use the Zoom as a portable preamp and USB audio interface?

On the other hand, if the Mikme quality is great, it seems a bit more ideal. Something smaller for this road trip, good enough to track an albums’ worth of vocal takes… then when I’m back home it’s a self-contained little “record this idea real quick” kinda thing.

I’m looking at that TE CM-15 as well, but then you’re talking $1200 and there aren’t any real reviews yet on its actual mic quality cuz it’s not actually out yet…

Anyone have any thoughts about these options? Or something else I hadn’t considered yet?

You might consider the Studio Projects Little Square Mic. It has both a analog and digital outputs (mini-XLR and mini-USB respectively) and a form factor ideal for traveling. You could record to the Zoom or a laptop; no internal recording like the Mikme. It’s discontinued but pops up fairly frequently used and NOS. I use mine for recording lectures for the online sections of the classes I teach.

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This is probably a silly and obvious suggestion, but you already have two pieces of equipment in your hands - why not evaluate how well they work alone or together to your taste in practise?

Eg. take a little table stand and a pop filter or similar, then:

  • Record a couple of vocal takes with Zoom H4N Pro alone
  • Record another couple of vocal takes with U87 hooked up to Zoom H4N Pro as interface and preamp

Then listen to them and think about whether either of those would produce results you’re happy with and if you’re willing to carry the U87 with you or not - or whether you should look at eg. Mikme, https://tulamics.com/ or some other separate “portable” mic.

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Has anyone had experience with the Zoom M4 for field recording?

https://zoomcorp.com/en/ca/mictrak-recorders/mictrak-recorders/m4-mictrak/

I was thinking of upgrading to 32 bit, and this one seems that it would be good for compact travel with built in mics as well as the ability to connect more hi-fidelity mics as required.

I would watch some reviews on this first. I’m a big fan of zoom when things work right, but the m series seems to have some buyer beware issues.

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Yikes! I was assuming that the M4 was in the lineage of the F3, but from that video, that does not seem to be the case.

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You get what you pay for: US$149 for the M2 means mic capsule is worth what - $10? I’m not watching that video, but I think ‘manage your expectations’ might be a better conclusion than yikes

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I wasn’t expecting stellar performance from the internal mics, but I thought the 32 bit recorder would be in a similar performance range to the F3. The video was about identifying some sort of self noise in the recorder with internal and external mics.

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I only posted that video because I was excited for a 32bit handheld with built in mics as well.

I do have the F3 and my only real complaint is that it doesn’t have a 3.5mm input for plug-in-powered small mics.

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Yeah this is a totally sensible suggestion :sweat_smile: What I didn’t mention is that I’m also on the road right now, and don’t have the u87 & h4n with me. I was getting a bit worried in advance of the trip and wanted to plan it out to feel better about it… but you’re totally right that it’s all too hypothetical right now until I actually try using the things I already own! I’ll be home quite soon, and will give it a shot before I overthink it anymore :smile:

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Has there been any alternative solutions for using dpa 4060s with an iPhone. I’m looking for a minimal lightweight solution, maybe this is still an option although it is discontinued.

https://www.dpamicrophones.com/accessories/mma-a-digital-audio-interface

50 years in between!

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Have you seen Rode AI-Micro?

A Sonosax M2-D2 works great but is not cheap

Anyone here had any experience with Rycote’s newer mics? There seems to be so little floating around about them, but maybe not a surprise given how long they have been on the market and that they aren’t exactly inpulse-buy priced. But compared to a pair of MKH80XX they are a steal. I’d love to hear more thoughts or recordings done with them, both field or studio work too.

I’ve gotten hooked on this idea that I would really like to eventually move more towards ORTF (maybe with a center spot) or M/S, but there aren’t a lot of outdoor suitable cardioid capsules outside of the MKH price range. There is info floating around too of a Fig 8 yet to be released in the series which would be great for a very high spec compact M/S set that is within reach.

If you just want to try out ORTF, Line Audios CM4s may be worth a go. They’re cheap (in the world of mics) and I’ve personally been really impressed with them. I did a simple, and not particularly exciting test against LOM Usi’s and probably preferred the CM4s in that test:

Bonus - they sound great recording acoustic instruments too.

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def have a pair on my list to pick up, they are a great bargain even just as studio mics. will def give your test a listen though - I haven’t found many listening examples of them as field mics and it is always nice to have gear that can do double duty.

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How are people feeling about H1n for quick and dirty environmental / ambience recording?

I’m getting a heavily discounted one primarily to use as an USB mic for a “mess around with sound” system, and for collecting FX / samples around the neighbourhood. However, I think I read a review from someone who sounded like they knew what they were doing, claiming the internal mics + preamps have got surprisingly low self noise for being so cheap and cheerful.

Of course it’s easy to try out once I get mine in a couple of days, but just wondering beforehand whether people have had success recording more quiet stereo sources with one of these.

very sexy nagra looks lovely

I’ve had years of fun using the zoom h1. The self noise is an issue once you start to crank up the gain for soft ambience sounds. But for using it sound as material for experimenting on worked pretty good for me. It is especially handy for having it always in your bag. And cheap enough to leave it recording for a few hours at some place where it might be stolen.
Mine is broken now though.

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