Sony ECM-DS70P Electret Stereo Microphone

[Scorpios]

I just bought a Boss Micro BR, now waiting for it to get here in the mail. I saw the article about suggested external microphones on this website, but wondering if anyone has any experience trying a Sony ECM-DS70P Electret Stereo Microphone?

I have seen these for very good prices on ebay left and right, I know a friend who had one that he used with a mini-disc recorder to record live sound and the sound quality was very impressive, as was the stereo seperation.

I have a home studio set up already, I bought the Boss Micro BR mainly for it's size/convenience. I want to be able to record band practice without having to take much time to set things up, and also to record my acoustic project in choice locations (castle towers, near rivers, etc for added ambience/natural acoustics).  - I am hoping it will be a quick process to open the sound files onto Sonar or a similar program to edit, add more tracks to, mix master etc. - I did notice an article about the files having to be converted to .WAV ... what format are the tracks recorded to on the Micro BR?

Anyway, it's good to see a forum primarily dedicated to these, back in the day when I was using Roland VS multitracks, I would have been lost without the help of the vsplanet forums.

[Pedro]

Welcome Scorpios!

Well I haven't used any of Sony microphones but have heard good things about it.

I found a sound sample on http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=17140
Sounds pretty good!

When it arrives be sure to show us your work, if you can.

The format is something like .BR, .BR0, .BR1. It is a proprietary format by BOSS and is not recognized by the PC. You have to convert it to .WAV with the BR2WAV Converter like seen on the article.

That is great, thanks. Hope to see you here more often.

 

[Oldrottenhead]

i have a pretty decent sensheiner mic but havent used it since i got the micro br the built in mic is surprisingly good.

[Scorpios]

Thanks for the replies.

I was hoping I wouldn't have to convert the files to wav, but oh well, I think I have used the same Br to wav software in the past to convert audio files from my Roland VS DAW's.

There are quite a few of the Sony stereo mics available on ebay for about 10$, last time I looked into them they were about 50$ so I think I will have to give one a try.

Is the built in condencer mic stereo or mono on the Micro BR?

[Pedro]

The built-in mic is mono.

Have you thought about building one? They can sound pretty good too.

You can read more in a article I wrote on https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?action=articles;sa=view;article=1

You should check it out
 

[Scorpios]

Yes, I saw the article on building a stereo mic, I will give this a try in the future.

[Scorpios]

Admin, I took a second look at the post you have up for building a stereo condensor mic, looked into prices for Capsules etc, I will definitely give this a try. The external link to design ideas was really cool as well.

Do you have some pictures you can post here of what you have come up with?

My only worries is I absolutely HATE soldering, so I guess for the price of the mic capsules you reccomended I should order a few extras as I most likely will fry a couple trying. I can think of some very useful ideas though after seeing the pics posted on that external link. - It looks like a very small area to work with, I guess I should invest in some alligator clips and try this before my normal dosage of caffeine.

[Pedro]

Admin, I took a second look at the post you have up for building a stereo condensor mic, looked into prices for Capsules etc, I will definitely give this a try. The external link to design ideas was really cool as well.

Do you have some pictures you can post here of what you have come up with?

My only worries is I absolutely HATE soldering, so I guess for the price of the mic capsules you recommended I should order a few extras as I most likely will fry a couple trying. I can think of some very useful ideas though after seeing the pics posted on that external link. - It looks like a very small area to work with, I guess I should invest in some alligator clips and try this before my normal dosage of caffeine.

I must say I'm not very handy. I created a thing like this:




The capsules are wrapped and sewed with an old sock to prevent the wind noise. The jack cable is wrapped around with wire so I can put it wherever its needed. The piece is connected to one of those things that "glue" themselves almost everywhere.

Yeah, don't worry too much about it, you can try to pratice in cheaper capsules first. When I soldered the ones on the photo I thought I had fried them because I soldered for like, 15 seconds on each one. But they didn't, they worked fine right from the beginning. It's a bit hard, be sure to do it before the caffeine. 

That website has some great ideas, indeed.

https://www.uwm.edu/~type/audio-reports/PanasonicWM-61A_OtherBinauralRigs/WM61A_Webpage_Caps_Mounts.html

[Scorpios]

I received the Sony stereo con. mic yesterday that I ordered and gave it a try, it worked really nice, while it worked.

Seems there is a loose connection in the right channel mic, so on and off out of no where it makes crackling... other than that, when it isnt crackling it picks up very nicely. I will try to record a couple quick examples if I can get it to work properly. The stereo range it picks up despite the mics being only an inch or two apart is impressive, panned 50/50 the panning sounds just where I like it for a drum kit, and picks up an acoustic really well, the input seems to be much louder than the built in mic.

I got in on ebay from an ebay store out of Hong Kong, ended up paying more for shipping than the actual mic, about 20$ US in total. I contacted them letting them know it arrived defect, not going to hold my breath on getting that resolved though, even if they let me return it and I have to pay the shipping to send it back, it's not worth the hassle, I guess I am going to just try to open it up and hopefully find a lose wire that I can hopefully re-solder. If that still doesn't work, I guess I will try to "frankenstein" it and try to use the working capsule alone with the second disconnected or add in a different second capsule, and just order another one in the meantime.

But like I said, from what I could tell while it was working properly, it seems like a really worthwhile investment. 

[64Guitars]

Seems there is a loose connection in the right channel mic, so on and off out of no where it makes crackling...

I guess I am going to just try to open it up and hopefully find a lose wire that I can hopefully re-solder.

With microphones, an intermittent connection is almost always from a poor fitting connector or a break in the cable. So before you open up the mic, try a different cable and/or try wiggling the connectors and moving the plug around in the BR's Mic jack. If it makes similar noises while you're doing that, the problem is probably at the connector. This is especially a problem with stereo mini plugs since the ring (which corresponds to one channel of the mic) is very small and doesn't always mate properly with the corresponding part of the mini jack in the BR. So you may have to wiggle it a bit to get the ring to line up and make good contact. Or you might want to replace the plug. Some plugs have a bit of a shoulder that prevents it from going into the jack all the way, so it doesn't make good contact on the ring. And some plugs have a slightly wider ring which has a better chance of making contact.