Sunday, July 31, 2016

AKG D130 microphone and Pleiades V4 preamplifier

Amazing vocal quality.


The excellent metal wind mesh can be washed. It was washed with a toothbrush and detergent.


A Pleiades low cut filter of only 100Hz  (333mH in parallel to mic) was needed since this is an omnidirectional microphone exhibiting no proximity effect. 


To get a similar flat response from an Electrovoice RE16 with its Low Cut on at 0in distance a 47mH primary inductance transformer is used (Pleiades V5 preamplifier). This roughly corresponds to more than 700Hz cut off if we include the RE16 filter too. It certainly agrees with what we can see on directional mic curves for very small distance where response starts rising below sometimes 1KHz! The added advantage is that the low frequency ambience is reduced too since this is at a far distance having a flat response before even the filter is applied!


One can hear more background ambient noise on the D130 but this microphone  has an amazing sound too.


Signal path:


AKG D130 - Pleiades 100Hz - Canford 400mH input transformer - Pleiades V4 - Realistic Disco Mixer at mic input - Sennheiser HD 580


Note: the cutoff frequency which sounded natural was actually higher than 100Hz as it is defined by the resultant inductance of the Pleiades 333mH and the Canford 400mH.


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