#8

No need to overthink it I think :slight_smile:

A) Just get the XLR - 3.5 cable and a mic that doesn’t use phantom power. The spec sheet of a mic will say if it needs 48v or phantom power. Any mic will do. Get something cheap.

B) Get a battery powered mic with an XLR-3.5 cable, any of the video mics you’ve been looking at are great. Bonus is that most of these mics were made to withstand a little bit of outdoor work and have some foam windscreen built into them.

Use one of these for a few months and then you’ll know if you need something fancier. If you go with option A then you’ll still have a decent mic. If you go with option B then some videographer will buy the mic from you.

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#9

Thanks!

Yeah, I made some further research about electret microphones powering, unfortunately looks like there’s no tiny Eurorack module that provides plug-in power like portable recorders does (including my Tascam, now I know). So it’d be hard and cumbersome to use them in my setup, since I’d need external powering units (hard to find, anyway) or build some kind of DIY solution (which I’d be perfectly able to, but still, it’d look ugly and I don’t want to risk undermining signal quality).

Given everything said before, I guess here you mean a microphone that doesn’t use any kind of power, being high-voltage phantom power or low-voltage plug-in power, right?

I think this is probably my best choice as of now.

Again, thanks everyone for guiding me through learning about all this stuff! If anyone else has something to add or specific models to suggest, I’m all ears.

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#10

If you run a row of 1u Tiles this will do it, I’ve used 'em and they work great. If you like soldering you can make a bunch of little electrets yourself even, easier than making a TRS cable.

http://pulplogic.com/product/e-tret/

Correct. For example, an SM57 or an SM58 or any other “dynamic microphone.”

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#11

Another option to consider, is getting an input module like the Expert Sleepers Little Mikey. It’s reasonably-priced, and has an option to provide phantom power. An Usi Pro into the Little Mikey would be a nice combination.

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#12

Unfortunately I have no 1U rows in my systems. However it’d be great to have schematics for this E-Tret, I could try working on that in the future, maybe. I have some experience in making DIY 3U modules. Asking Pulp Logic costs nothing, let’s try :smile:

#13

Quite big for my portable system, also looks like it doesn’t have plug-in power, but only higher voltage phantom power. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

#14

I have an Azden SM-10 video mic that I bought years ago for recording video. It takes batteries but still requires phantom power so when I use it I have to connect it the mic in to my Tascam audio recorder. Also, it’s a stereo mic.

I know next to nothing about mics as well, so I have no idea if that info is helpful. I like the mic though and have used it to record ambient sounds and stuff around the house.

#15

Thanks. Actually, it says “powered by AAA battery or plug-in power”, so it looks like I don’t need to provide any power if I use batteries, which is what I want. I’ll add it to the list, it’s well under my budget, although I’m a bit worried about its 100Hz frequency response lower limit.

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#16

For the price range, you could pick up another tascam or zoom recorder and just use it for the live output, with the bonus of also being able to record whatever it’s picking up.

2 Likes
#17

The battery seems to have no effect with my mic. It could very well be me though, I’ve only recently taken an interest in it, to be honest, I often forget to turn it off and I may just need to swap out the battery.

#18

Yep, replace the battery and you’ll be good. Or remove the battery altogether and use phantom from your system. If you have phantom and also tend to forget to turn off the mic then skip the battery altogether. :slight_smile:

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#19

I have a question about the XLR to 3.5mm TRS converter cable. As I understood it, the tip and ring will provide the audio signal and its opposite, because of the balanced XLR pins. My input module have a stereo input jack and two mono L+R modular outputs, so my question is, will I get the signal and its opposite on the L and R channels? Will I be fine with one of them until I don’t mix with the other one?

#20

Also consider just getting a small mixer and feed the system from that. Then you have xlr, phantom power and also a fader, meters, headphone monitoring etc. The most solid and playable approach perhaps…

#21

No doubt, but I’d like to use it also for a 48HP portable, battery-powered setup to use outside, so I guess a mixer, albeit small, is quite impractical :slight_smile: – PS: I’m deciding on the Rode NT-3, which is both battery-powered and phantom-powered through XLR, I already have a MACKIE Mix5 at home, in case I want to use it in studio.

#22

You’re just going to route the mic signal to one of your mono inputs. Ideally, you use a TRS to TS cable with tip-tip, ring-shield, and cable shield left floating on the TS side. With a TRS to TRS cable plugged into a TS jack, the ring will short to ground—which may be fine.

#23

In my case, the input module (an EricaSynth Pico INPUT) has a standard stereo TRS input, which gets amplified and splitted into the two mono modular-level L/R outputs. So I will plug the TRS cable directly, that is why (having a basic knowledge of how balanced signals works, but knowing nothing about how XLR/TRS cables are made) I asked what to expect on L/R.

#24

I would also be quite interested in finding a solution for a module that can supply plug-in power for 3.5mm lav mics, are there really no solutions for this other than a 1U tile?

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#25

:thinking:

Shouldn’t it be possible to use a stackcable and any old CV offset module to power a plug-in powered mic? It would require tweaking the voltage output depending on the output impedance of the CV offset module.

You’d also need some amplification, and to filter out the DC component of the signal with a HP filter or an A/C-coupled input.

:warning: I don’t know the ratings of the particular components in play here, so I don’t know the consequences of putting too much current through your capsules! All I know (from my brief research) is that most electret capsules have JFET buffers that require a particular amount of current to bias them open. That might not be the right terminology… “bias” usually refers to the gate side and JFETs conduct even when Vgs is 0, so no bias needed. It should be possible to start at 0V and use your ears to determine when you’re in the right ballpark. Just a couple volts should do it!

Source: https://www.ti.com/lit/ug/tidu765/tidu765.pdf

#26

Ok, plugging directly into a stereo TRS (left input) should be ok, as long as you only take one channel out of your Pico Input. The left channel will take the hot signal from your mic from the tip.

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#27

this is off topic by a bit but if I were to be looking for a basic microphone for general fx recording I would start at shop goodwill - alway lots of cheap and cheerful dynamic mics with 1/4 plugs in the $10 range.
example link