Singing in practice to a backing track with MD211 N

It was decided to sing this time while music is being heard in the background coming from a speaker in an adjacent room.


The Is it Ok if I Call You Mine? was used from the original 80's Fame soundtrack.


Surprise.  Although the Wetesrn Electric transformer was used which reduces a bit bass heaviness by its 1H primary inductance and projects voice ...


The sound was more bass heavy than expected. It seems there is an additional effect of masking of high frequencies by the backing track. A deep low slope high pass filter made the singing voice register similar to the original backing track song.


In fact since the song playing on the CD was the original with the singer, it was really singing along with him and a very direct comparison could be made between registers in real time.


Setup, signal path:


Portable Sony CD player - Pleiades 2N3053 power amp - Philips AD5046N 800Ω speaker


male singing voice - (Pleiades 130Ω,40mH) filter - Western Electric 1:2 step up transfomer - Sony TC-D5 Pro - Sennheiser HD580


Without an R,L filter the voice sound was somewhat bass and mid heavy with none of the sparkle of the original vocal.


With the 130Ω,40mH Pleiades filter the vocal became bright and sparkling. Perhaps even more than needed. Annoying chestiness was gone. So it sounded quite similar to the original vocal. R,L values can be fine tuned.


The particular RL filter used may or may had not been too much. But it sounds that an RL Pleiades filter should definetly be needed.


The quality of treble on voice was excellent from such a wonderful world class microphone. Noise was minimal. The Western Electric transformer (1H:4H) did I an excellent job of further reducing any plosive, pops etc by its Lenz's law damping action or its sub bass reduction.