soundfield mics

[SSLtech]

A friend of mine and new colleague (former AMS/Neve employee) has a broken soundfield... I keep telling him to bring it in for me to look at...

:roll:

Keith

 

[DrFrankencopter]

I have a Shoeps KFM-6...the sphere mic. I know it's not a soundfield, but it does produce some incredible sounding recordings. And, DIYing something like this isn't that hard, because all the filtering is done acoustically via the baffle. It's basically two omni capsules mounted in opposite sides of a 8 inch sphere.

Cheers,

Kris

 

[microx]

I guess the sphere mic is a "binaural" mic .I made one once with a polystyrene head and a pair of omni electrets. It sounded odd, interesting but odd. Are the capsules inthe sphere mic dynamic or what?
Steve

 

[DrFrankencopter]

The sphere mic is not really binaural. I mean yes it works great over headphones, but the image also works over conventional speakers. There are no simulated ears on the sphere so that's why there is no real binaural encoding in it. It truly is just a pair of sphere baffled omni mics.

As far as the mic elements, they are definitely condensor...I don'tthink that Schoeps makes anything else. The mic needs 48V to come alive, and when it does it lights a red LED that's midway between the two capsules (you can align the LED to the center of your 'image'). The output is a 5 pin XLR that gets split out to two standard 3 pin XLRs.

Apparently, the size of the sphere makes a big difference on the sound (comb filtering I guess). 8 inches in diameter was the size that schoeps settled on for no active equalization required. It sounds incredible...very real.

Cheers,

Kris

 

[microx]

More and more interesting. Do you know if there are any electronics inside the sphere apart from the normal impedance matching preamp.
what size are the capsules?
Steve