Stereo Mini Microphone / what can I do with this?

[JimJhn]

Hello.

A friend gave me one of these little TRRS stereo mini-microphones.

I was hoping to use it for talkback or something, but I think it wants to be powered by a camera or cellphone or something as I get no signal out of it?

Does anyone know if this could be of any use?

Much obliged!

 

[k brown]

https://www.soundonsound.com/glossary/plug-power-0
http://www.richardmudhar.com/articles/sound-recording-guide/pip.html
The plug in the photos is a mini TRS - not TRRS - do you have it attached to an adapter? If not, it
can be used with any portable recorder with a miniplug mic jack that supplies plug-in-power (most do).

 

[JimJhn]

Thank you. I guess I'll look for some circuit that also supplies power if I use it for some kind of talkback thing in the studio.

 

[JimJhn]

I AM very dense!

I am so used to recording studios.

Would this be what the video people's standard lavaliere mics use?

Not 48v, but 5-6vdc?

 

[JimJhn]

Like this?

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255...Product&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa&_randl_shipto=US

 

[k brown]

No, that's for a dynamic mic, not an electret.

 

[JimJhn]

OK I just saw that too!

I thought I was getting a dynamic actually.

I looked up "camera mics" and that seems to be what that is.

Seeing as I have about eight unused 57s and 58s around here, I think I'll just put this in a drawer, and use one of them for talkback!

 

[Icantthinkofaname]

I can't imagine there's much that could be done with it, they're meant for phones and cameras and stuff, and looking at this mic on Amazon it says it's 34 dB self noise, and reviews of a similar looking one branded Olympus say they're quite tinny (and the Olympus one costs 2-3x as much), so I don't even know if it'd be worth harvesting the capsules. It might be worth carrying around for sudden video or audio recording on a smartphone, but other than that I don't think there's anything you could do with it.

 

[Tubetec]

A phone has TRRS mini jack , left ,right, ground and mic in , sometimes ground is on the S and mic is on the R .
The mic shown has TRS , its a stereo mic , it wont interface with a phone .
These kinds of mics were often used on portable minidisc recorders and walkmans with record function.

Id probably stick to a 58 for talkback , you could mount it up on a PTT base if you wanted but its just as easy to connect it to a mic input near the master section and just use the channel mute for on off , that way any circuit noise in that mic channel doesnt end up in the mix all the time .

I always keep a 58 to hand when I do live sound , very handy during the sound check , just feeding monitors for talkback to the stage ,
At the end of the night feeding a little crowd noise back over FOH is a great way to help convince the band to come back on stage for an encore ,
A light tapping on the mic with a finger can sound like heavy foot stomping , that sets off a chain reaction and it sounds like the crowd are ready to riot and tear the house down , as I said a very effective way of making the band come back on stage .Neither crowd nor band detects they've been duped if you do it with subtlety

 

[JimJhn]

That is funny! One of my friends is a FOH engineer, and I asked him how he does allot of the pre-concert calibration.

He told me he just talks into a 58 behind the FOH board in the back seats and he knows his voice so well that he can hear most of what he needs to calibrate for a venue very quickly just with that.

I did a 4 minute "shootout" yesterday with talkback mics using mics here that don't get much use, and the 58 was fine.

Also one of these, which is a condenser built for that purpose. I think I actually picked it up on-sale for $20.00 if I remember correctly.

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=14891

 

[Tubetec]

I know plenty of engineers who do exactly that , basically eq out the room by ear , then adjust the source as required , knowing what they expect to hear on their own voice gets them 90% there , its just minor tweaks from there .
Many still rely on cheap graphic eqs to tweak FOH to their liking , I preferred to work with the speaker management /x-over to get things into the right ball park ,then rely on individual channel eq to get the rest of the way ,

Visiting engineers would arrive in , find the FOH graphic flat level and bypassed and have a headscrastch and a bit off a huff about going through their usual "check check one-t'sue one-t'sue' routine ringing out the system for half an hour followed by drum check ,instruments and vocals ,
They'd have 12-14 mics ,gates ,comps , de-essers and spend ages setting it all up for it to sound like an AM radio broadcast from hundreds of miles away .
I typically did things much more simply in terms of mic setup , with quality tallent the comps /de-essers and all the other garbage is hardly ever necessary .
I prefer to keep sound checks to a few minutes instead of turning the whole process to torture for everyone involved ,
Sometimes you will get an up and coming puke who thinks the sun shines out their arsehole and tries to make a fuss about setting up , there was a few times this old dog had to use the TB mic to woof loudly through the monitors before a mini riot took place amongst musicians on stage , of course I shook hands with them all afterwards and the fracas was long forgotten .

Anyone in the music/sound trade will know the craic , I guess many of us were there in our youth or even still have a bit of the fire burning inside ,

There was one time ,
A bunch of buddies had a hard rock cover band , it was un-PC 70's **** rock , Free, ACDC ,Sabbath ,Lizzy ,
One night the vocalist arrived in to the gig loaded up on something , he continued to belt the beers back during the gig ,
Towards the end he kept trying to kneel down on stage and jangle the guitarists ,how do you say it in your language ,
'cajones' during the solos
The music had to stop for a few moments and it nearly prompted a downing of tools , fist fight and rage quit incident ,
the crowd were falling around the place at the spectacle ,
One of the guitarists firmly warned the front man never to attempt it again under threat of a bonk on the head with the Les Paul,
the other , a more off the spectrum/rainman type character was left all watery eyed and broke down by the experience ,

Took a little time for Jimi Hendrix's re-icarnation's nuts to decend from the safe place , but they managed to soldier on to the end of the gig .
Spinal Tap meets Montys Flying Circus .

 

[JimJhn]

I know plenty of engineers who do exactly that , basically eq out the room by ear , then adjust the source as required , knowing what they expect to hear on their own voice gets them 90% there , its just minor tweaks from there .
Many still rely on cheap graphic eqs to tweak FOH to their liking , I preferred to work with the speaker management /x-over to get things into the right ball park ,then rely on individual channel eq to get the rest of the way ,

Visiting engineers would arrive in , find the FOH graphic flat level and bypassed and have a headscrastch and a bit off a huff about going through their usual "check check one-t'sue one-t'sue' routine ringing out the system for half an hour followed by drum check ,instruments and vocals ,
They'd have 12-14 mics ,gates ,comps , de-essers and spend ages setting it all up for it to sound like an AM radio broadcast from hundreds of miles away .
I typically did things much more simply in terms of mic setup , with quality tallent the comps /de-essers and all the other garbage is hardly ever necessary .
I prefer to keep sound checks to a few minutes instead of turning the whole process to torture for everyone involved ,
Sometimes you will get an up and coming puke who thinks the sun shines out their arsehole and tries to make a fuss about setting up , there was a few times this old dog had to use the TB mic to woof loudly through the monitors before a mini riot took place amongst musicians on stage , of course I shook hands with them all afterwards and the fracas was long forgotten .

Anyone in the music/sound trade will know the craic , I guess many of us were there in our youth or even still have a bit of the fire burning inside ,

There was one time ,
A bunch of buddies had a hard rock cover band , it was un-PC 70's **** rock , Free, ACDC ,Sabbath ,Lizzy ,
One night the vocalist arrived in to the gig loaded up on something , he continued to belt the beers back during the gig ,
Towards the end he kept trying to kneel down on stage and jangle the guitarists ,how do you say it in your language ,
'cajones' during the solos
The music had to stop for a few moments and it nearly prompted a downing of tools , fist fight and rage quit incident ,
the crowd were falling around the place at the spectacle ,
One of the guitarists firmly warned the front man never to attempt it again under threat of a bonk on the head with the Les Paul,
the other , a more off the spectrum/rainman type character was left all watery eyed and broke down by the experience ,

Took a little time for Jimi Hendrix's re-icarnation's nuts to decend from the safe place , but they managed to soldier on to the end of the gig .
Spinal Tap meets Montys Flying Circus .

Yeah I was kind of astounded when he told me that he could sus-out a whole arena with just a 58 and his voice, but then he said that he had been listening to his own voice through a 58 for 40 years or more over sound-systems and it was second-nature. He wasn't showing off or complaining about where stuff has headed and "the old days", more just explaining his own process.

I know he would agree with you about outboard on live gigs.

He does almost exclusively jazz, and all that stuff would just get into the way of hearing instruments the way they were meant to be heard.

I am not a minimalist by any stretch of the imagination, and adore all the gadgets and plug-ins, but in those cases maybe yeah?

Your night at the nightclub is a terrific story! Thanks!

 

[ruffrecords]

Now I am in my 70s my hearing has begun to deteriorate noticeably. I now wear National Helth hearing aids. They are gi=uite good but not up to pro standards.Please attach the stereo mic to the headband of a pair of good quality headphones. Feed it through a good quality preamp with EQ to make me a pair of hi-fi hearing aids.

Cheers

Ian

 

[neowalla]

I have one of these. The price was right and since I don't always have one of my good digital recorders with me, but I always have my cell with me pretty much wherever I go, I wanted to be able to make better recordings than I can with the built in mic on the phone. BUT the big problem is the seeming lack of any decent software for Android. All the "apps" I've tried sound very compressed - even those that claim to record in WAV. You also cannot choose your own folder unless you buy the "premium" version and the default folder is some obscure folder buried deep in the phone. I have no problem buying an app IF I could just find a decent one.