Mavis Prima MPA-81s is a very nice donor mic platform

[VanguardAudioLabs]

vanguard's pickiness is legendary in china. i've overheard gossip about it. it's definitely a custom tuning on his capsule. cruelly tight QC too. the plate anatomy isn't too special though iirc.

i didn't realize we had that kind of a reputation there but yeah, there's a reason why we switched metalwork and have generally been much happier. A few new kinks to work out, and I made a very silly mistake in my design and you have to remove the PCBs to get the headgrill off on the gen2, which is a PITA for any service work we have to do. Should have caught in CAD, but didn't. Next round the headgrill screws are getting a 10º rotation. Always room for iterative improvement!

 

[Khron]

EDIT: can you DM me? I cannot for the life of me figure out how to send you a DM.

You can't, until you have at least ten posts. Hence your username also showing up in red.

 

[Wordsushi]

i didn't realize we had that kind of a reputation there but yeah, there's a reason why we switched metalwork and have generally been much happier. A few new kinks to work out, and I made a very silly mistake in my design and you have to remove the PCBs to get the headgrill off on the gen2, which is a PITA for any service work we have to do. Should have caught in CAD, but didn't. Next round the headgrill screws are getting a 10º rotation. Always room for iterative improvement!

Here, Derek, I'll try to help with getting you to 10 posts.

I'm Mark, the guy who made the comparison videos with the Mavis ripoff and I'd love to do a brief follow up on my channel and quote an official response from you and Vanguard with anything you'd like to say about the video, your mics, your processes, your capsules which definitely seem to be far superior, etc. I'm glad you were able to find this thread to add clarity to the topic.

I think it would only be fair that if you'd like to respond to this with a statement, I'll read it on the channel so that anyone who may have created an opinion based upon what was presented can have a fuller picture of all the information. If you choose not to reply, I'll probably just grab a couple of quotes from what you've posted so far in this thread and attribute them to your response in this thread, but I thought I'd ask if you had anything specific you'd like to address in this regard.

 

[kingkorg]

Apologies, I don't check these forums often.

I'd be interested in this although I have a few questions about it. I will DM you.

When you say "Quite a few with direct connections to OEM manufacturers" I will give you a 'grain of salt' story from my Avantone days. Ken being gone now, I'd set the record straight on something. We have all the original drawings for the Avantone BV-1 (I guess what the new owner calls the "first generation") that he worked on for several years and talked to several OEM/ODMs about manufacturing. I've still got them on my drive on this computer, in fact. The manufacturer he finally ended up going with ended up taking the design and selling it to T-Bone (Thomann), ART, and a few others before we even got our first shipment - which they had stored improperly and had all sorts of corrosion issues for the metal parts, at which point they accused us of running "saltwater testing" on all our metalwork.

It was a nightmare. To this day, that manufacturer insists that it was "their design". Ken never sent any NNN agreements or anything of the sort to manufacturers, and several things got lifted over the years and it always caused problems.

EDIT: can you DM me? I cannot for the life of me figure out how to send you a DM.

Sure, this makes absolute sense. Without going into details, and causing international scandal, you have no idea what Thomann is capable of doing. They do similar kind of things to greatest names in the business. DM sent, thanks for replying and showing interest.

 

[VanguardAudioLabs]

Here, Derek, I'll try to help with getting you to 10 posts.

I'm Mark, the guy who made the comparison videos with the Mavis ripoff and I'd love to do a brief follow up on my channel and quote an official response from you and Vanguard with anything you'd like to say about the video, your mics, your processes, your capsules which definitely seem to be far superior, etc. I'm glad you were able to find this thread to add clarity to the topic.

I think it would only be fair that if you'd like to respond to this with a statement, I'll read it on the channel so that anyone who may have created an opinion based upon what was presented can have a fuller picture of all the information. If you choose not to reply, I'll probably just grab a couple of quotes from what you've posted so far in this thread and attribute them to your response in this thread, but I thought I'd ask if you had anything specific you'd like to address in this regard.

i'll think about it although i'm currently rather exhausted and not in any coherent state. If you'd send me a DM as well or we can chat on the phone i'd be interested in setting a few things straighter than they currently are…

 

[VanguardAudioLabs]

Sure, this makes absolute sense. Without going into details, and causing international scandal, you have no idea what Thomann is capable of doing. They do similar kind of things to greatest names in the business. DM sent, thanks for replying and showing interest.

I'm aware of a few stories .

 

[VanguardAudioLabs]

You can't, until you have at least ten posts. Hence your username also showing up in red.

I didn't even notice the red username, although it does go with the Vanguard stylebook I suppose!

 

[soliloqueen]

i didn't realize we had that kind of a reputation there but yeah, there's a reason why we switched metalwork and have generally been much happier. A few new kinks to work out, and I made a very silly mistake in my design and you have to remove the PCBs to get the headgrill off on the gen2, which is a PITA for any service work we have to do. Should have caught in CAD, but didn't. Next round the headgrill screws are getting a 10º rotation. Always room for iterative improvement!

Stuff like this happens. We had a recent run of back plates with the through holes way too small. Had to scrap them small. Typo in the negative tolerance lol.

 

[VanguardAudioLabs]

Stuff like this happens. We had a recent run of back plates with the through holes way too small. Had to scrap them small. Typo in the negative tolerance lol.

oof that's rough! I've had similar goofs on my engineering drawings, but then we catch it in prototyping stage. Our bodies were 1mm too short on the first prototype with the new metalwork supplier. I was writing an annoyed email right up until I went to take a screenshot of the engineering drawing. Whoops

 

[soliloqueen]

oof that's rough! I've had similar goofs on my engineering drawings, but then we catch it in prototyping stage. Our bodies were 1mm too short on the first prototype with the new metalwork supplier. I was writing an annoyed email right up until I went to take a screenshot of the engineering drawing. Whoops

The annoying thing is sometimes depending on the scrupulousness of the supplier they will prototype to tighter tolerances and then do production to the letter, so if your tolerances are wrong sometimes you don't find out until production

 

[kingkorg]

Just for transparency sake, @VanguardAudioLabs and I have been in contact. Once the stars align, and if they align i will test one of these capsules, and post the comparison and the measurements here.

 

[VanguardAudioLabs]

The annoying thing is sometimes depending on the scrupulousness of the supplier they will prototype to tighter tolerances and then do production to the letter, so if your tolerances are wrong sometimes you don't find out until production

familiar with that one too, also by way of the hard way!

 

[SubSpec]

@VanguardAudioLabs I just want to say the engagement here is excellent! Vanguard hadn't made it onto my shortlist of mics to try, but I'll be looking for an excuse to try one now simply due to the respectful engagement with the community.

 

[VanguardAudioLabs]

@VanguardAudioLabs I just want to say the engagement here is excellent! Vanguard hadn't made it onto my shortlist of mics to try, but I'll be looking for an excuse to try one now simply due to the respectful engagement with the community.

Glad to hear it. I try really hard not to take things personally, including the video that started all this. I think anyone who has owned a business and poured heart & soul/blood, sweat, & tears into it knows how hard it is NOT to take things personally. I get why some business owners get snippy under outside criticism. I suspect I do it at times as well.

I will state that Mark's video contains a few inaccuracies and some incomplete information - but I'm hoping I can correct the record there. I've got a few urgent things I have to tend for Vanguard, but hopefully I can find some time to chat with Mark later this week. When Ken died earlier this year, it made things much, much harder for me.

-DEREK

 

[VanguardAudioLabs]

in the interest of transparency - just had a very nice 1-hour chat with Mark and was able to complete a few incomplete things. I suspect Mark will do a followup on his channel.

 

[kingkorg]

in the interest of transparency - just had a very nice 1-hour chat with Mark and was able to complete a few incomplete things. I suspect Mark will do a followup on his channel.

In the interest of common sense i have to congratulate you on upping the level of creating metaphysical marketing plots in order to sell a product.

Just seen the video, and my pulse and blood pressure are so high, the only thing i'm focused on is how not to insult anyone. And i'm not shooting towards @Wordsushi who is merely a messenger.

Now i'm so interested in your microphones, that i'll do all i can to get my hands on one, dissect it, test and post the results.

If anyone in Europe has one to ship to me, i'll gladly pay for shipping and return. Since Vanguard doesn't have even ONE! capsule to sent to me for testing.

 

[VanguardAudioLabs]

Hi Matia

I’m OOO at the moment. Was supposed to be in the High Sierra by now but I’m stuck at PHX on a 8-hr flight delay. Yuck. I’m back in office next week.


I haven’t seen the video but at least now I know what I’ll be doing with my time while I putter around the airport.

Yeah, we’re literally out of capsules at the moment that aren’t already installed in mics on the shelf. I’ve got more supposed to be arriving end of week. They didn’t actually ship out til Thursday.

To clarify something I saw in the first couple minutes - between the two of us Ken and I have shelves of probably 300 capsules total we tested and tweaked with. We did them in batches of 10 or so to test consistency, but over the years it got crazy.

 

[kingkorg]

Hi Matia

I’m OOO at the moment. Was supposed to be in the High Sierra by now but I’m stuck at PHX on a 8-hr flight delay. Yuck. I’m back in office next week.


I haven’t seen the video but at least now I know what I’ll be doing with my time while I putter around the airport.

Yeah, we’re literally out of capsules at the moment that aren’t already installed in mics on the shelf. I’ve got more supposed to be arriving end of week. They didn’t actually ship out til Thursday.

To be clear - between the two of us Ken and I have shelves of probably 300 capsules total we tested and tweaked with. We did them in batches of 10 or so to test consistency, but over the years it got crazy.

Trying to gish gallop me?

There is limited number of ways you can tweak that capsule, and they have all been explored by various Chinese manufacturers. Consistency of manufacturing in China is currently higher than you can probably measure at your facilities, presuming you know what and how to measure. These highly consistent manufacturers charge their capsules 30$ at best. Do you even know who originally designed and came up with your capsule design? I do!

I don't buy that you don't have any capsules available. Period.

I have spent a decade in R&D, testing, marketing, developing diverse marketing plots. Working for a serious, international company. There is little you can surprise me with. You did it tho with cryogenics. Even if what you are claiming is true, if you really understood microphones you would know there is nothing to be gained from this improved component performance.

This claim makes me even more suspicious. Going after DIYers, honest, humble people by bullying them into making fools of themselves ( I am really sorry for this @Wordsushi ) is a cheap, tragic way of running a company.

But don't worry, i made it a priority to get one of these mics, and I can't wait to measure each and every of those components for every possible spec, how well they are matched, if matching is to be expected within the circuit.

 

[VanguardAudioLabs]

I dearly wish I was joking. I’ve been up since 4am, I’m very tired, and I’m sitting in a very uncomfortable airport chair.

 

[VanguardAudioLabs]

Cryo treatment makes a difference. I fear Mark may not have fully understood my nerd-out about it, which I put fully on myself. I’m not a great communicator at the best of times. But here I am trying to communicate on an iPhone keyboard.

We don’t treat resistors for the obvious reason of not wanting to change resistances in precision resistors. But cryo treatment does help with crystalline structures in certain materials, for instance the conversion of austenite to martensite (I might have those backwards) in steel. It does reduce resistance in certain materials when it’s done properly.

I thought cryo was BS until we did blind tests of mics at Ken’s insistence. After changing the tubes and capsules around to make sure we weren’t crazy we sent it to a few other people we deeply trusted and they heard the same thing. It makes a difference where it matters - the ear - and I don’t know what to tell you other than that. It doesn’t correct tolerances, but it does reduce noise floor and create an audible change we were quite happy with. It’s not 50% better or even 20% better, but if you make a bunch of “5% better” changes in development, it adds up.

I fear I’ve made an unintentional mess, but I’m about to go rent a car and drive 10hrs because my flight is getting cancelled now.

As for “manipulating DIYers” - I started as a DIYer and tinkerer as a kid, through high school and college. I have no formal EE training, just lots of reading and trial/error and soldering iron burns - like most people here I suspect. I still largely feel like a DIYer most days. Not trying to drag or manipulate anyone and I’m sorry you feel that’s what’s happening. I have a lot of respect for the community because I gained interest and knowledge by being a part of it.