Forbes Magazine has noticed the return of the analogue synthesiser. I’ve seen a lot of people buying old and rebuilding; I wasn’t aware how many of the classics were back in or about to return to production.

Korg MS-20 (courtesy Wikipedia)

There seems to be some idea floating out there – and certainly in that Forbes article – that it’s a matter of rejecting digital, with it’s an implication that it’s some sort of Overdue Retreat From False Progress, and similar foolishness.

That’s not just wrong, it’s stupid. It’s the kind of derpitude written for people who don’t understand a subject and are wearing their late-middle-age everything-was-better-in-my-day nostalgia crap goggles.

Never wear those.

But something real is happening: a recognition that these were interesting and unique instruments in their own rights, and that new “versions” of the instrumental idea are not the instrumental idea. Just as the successors of the lute were not lute version 2.0, the successors of these synths are are not these instruments, version 2.0. They’re new instruments, with their own merits and flaws.

The technology model of continuous improvement doesn’t apply to everything, no matter how hard you try.

Similarly, just as MIDI violin doesn’t preempt real violin, emulations of the actual instrument – while useful, I’m a huge fan of the Animoog implementation on my iPad – do not always replace the actual instrument.

Particularly not with players. Not with the musicians. All of these things have their own physicalities, and for a lot of players – like me – that’s important. There are tens of thousands of bass guitars out there; there are a few I love. There are far fewer Irish Bouzoukis out there; and there are two, so far, I love. Part of that’s the sound; part of that is the physicality. It all matters.

I’m glad that’s finally being recognised for these classic analogue subtractive synths. The recognition that they are unique instruments, of a kind and a type, and of value not as a step to something else, but to themselves, and their unique sounds – it’s long overdue. Returning them to production is no more some kind of reactionary step backwards than is continuing to produce fiddles.

And I’m all for it. Welcome back to the fold, subtractive synths. We missed you.

I made another one of these mic cases out of a pistol case. This one is claimed to be a two pistol case, but it holds my three M-Audio Novas nicely.

It’s a pretty good case for mics but I don’t think it’d be a great pistol case because the egg crate foam doesn’t line up the way it should, and they seem to know that, and left space to compensate. That’s fine if you’re dealing with big microphones, but not good for small mics or pistols. My other cases, the foam lines up right, so you could use them for smaller mics.

Y’know, a quality rigid microphone case, with lots of padding and room for accessories – that’ll set you back a good $30-$40. And unless you buy one already matched with your gear, you’ll have to cut the foam to suit your application yourself.

On the other hand, a quality compact pistol case from a reputable maker? That’ll cost as little as $9.

Guess what I did?

Welcome to economies of scale. You’re welcome.

Been fiddling with the new pre-amp and ribbon microphone I built. Also with alternate tunings; I’ve found that tuning up a half-step really resonates my zouk; I’ll be doing that on the soundtrack album for Something’s Coming.

Reminder: everything on Bandcamp is still set to pay-what-you-like download. Grab while grabbing is good! Some of you have been and some of you have thrown tip money too, for which I think you muchly. ^_^

I also found that dropping three steps but keeping the high string on E on the zouk results in kind of an E sus 2 opening tuning; it interacts interestingly playing against a mandolin in standard tuning. I made a quick recording of a simple progression – it’s rough, but you get the idea.

That’s recorded on the ribbon microphone and new pre-amp, too if you’re wondering what those sound like. I’ve no idea how to use this mic to best effect yet, but I’m liking the sound so far.

I’m still chasing down radio-frequency interference ghosts in the preamp – yes, I am still the Ghost Host – but I did promise a ribbon microphone build post! And the microphone seems to be behaving fine, so why not?

First, you should know what a ribbon microphone is. It’s the first truly high-fidelity microphone design; those RCA diamond-shaped microphones you seen in old films? Ribbon microphones.

Yep, these things

They’re the only high-fidelity microphone you can make at home, if you have all the parts; there are no active components. They’ve never fallen completely out of use, having a characteristic sound which is particularly good for strings, classical instruments, and, curiously, metal; recently, they’ve come back into fashion.

Perhaps you see my attraction.

The active element is a nonmagnetic conductive ribbon, corrugated, and stretched between two high-power natural magnets. The vibration that sound waves in the air induce in the ribbon creates an electrical current, which is your signal. It’s a very low power signal, and the ribbon is crazy thin, making the microphone very delicate – I won’t be taking this microphone out.

So let’s make one! This one’s built from an Austin Microphones kit, but you can just get the design plans and roll your own parts list if you want. Read more

I was picking up radio on the ribbon mic’s pre-amp, at really high amplification gain. Ribbon mics need tremendous gain, because the base signal is so low, which meant this mattered. It wasn’t enough to appear in most – emphasis on most – recording situations, but I didn’t want it at all, because it indicates a potential circuit problem.

For the record, you start listening to EMF noise boosted by 96 to 142db (from extremely low levels), and you start chasing some serious fuckin’ ghosts. Somebody get me a skiffy channel show, stat.

Anyway, earlier in the day, I’d gone through all my patch cables, isolating the most RF-tight via comparative testing. It was a pretty big range. But even the best ones were still picking up some of that radio sound, and with some work, I could get it in clearly – tho’ always at extremely low levels.

Now, before I set about finding my best patch cables, I’d isolated out the microphone connection, to reduce complexity and eliminate other noise sources.

This is called a Null Signal Wire.

Turns out, a 3mm run of unshielded null signal wire can bring up a surprisingly durable amount of RF, in the form of BBC World Service on shortwave. Pulled that back out, popped in a microphone cable (connected to the ribbon mic): no more radio.

The goofy thing is that Cascadia is notorious for shitty shortwave reception. I can’t get BBC World Service reliably on my shortwave radio. AND YET.

At least it’s sorted, now. I still need to evaluate a few more cables, but the explanation is in hand, and that’s the important thing.

Ever wondered how thin a ribbon microphone ribbon actually is?

Click for full-size

That’s how thin. Edible gold leaf is much thicker than this.

You take aluminium this thin, cut it into strips, then corrugate it with great pressure, with wood, all by hand. It’s not as difficult as it sounds, but once it’s done, it’s like “…wow, that’s… really delicate work!”

I’ve made a couple of viable ribbons at this point and have been testing the completed microphone. This ribbon had a nick on the edge, so was useless, and never made it to the corrugation stage. I threw it out, then fished it back out of the bin for a photo.

You can’t actually touch them; they disintegrate on contact. The toothpicks shown here are for handling the metal.

I’ll make a microphone assembly post probably tomorrow.

eta: I just tried to measure how fast it falls (terminal velocity), and it fell about 60cm before deciding to hover there for a bit. Presumably in an updraft I couldn’t feel, not just out of sheer orneriness. So I’m guessing around 10cm/second? Except when it just doesn’t feel like it.

The preamp is sensitive to my personal EM field.

Awesome.

I’ve written the Austin people. Hopefully we’ll get something.

I also been building the ribbon microphone. I think it’s okay! But I can’t be sure yet because I don’t have the right preamp. The mic seems to work fine on the TASCAM – go me! I made ribbon microphone ribbons! – but it lacks adequate gain, so that’s not a workable solution.

Bed now. Work on this tomorrow.

eta: This is still true, but it looks like I can shield around it – it’s in no small part a cable-as-antenna question, and my best cables shield me out – I have successful tests again! n/ Austin Microphones is being super-responsive, too; well done there.

I built an Austin microphone preamp from a kit! It’s for use with ribbon mics, and also dynamics – it doesn’t supply (and cannot be hooked to something which supplies) phantom power, so it’s pretty special-purpose and will never leave the studio. But given that I’m about to have a ribbon microphone, it’s useful! And hopefully fun. Anna made me promise not to blow anything up; when I told her that horse had left the barn, she added “today,” and upon checking the clock I found I could agree.

The kit came in a bunch of components and a few machined parts in an assortment of bags. You also get a PDF with extremely detailed directions. See that printout to the right? You get a bunch of those, along with step-by-step instructions.

Must be Sunday

Building is therefore pretty simple, as long as you know how to solder, can keep your solder under control on a fairly but not screamingly small experimenter’s board – you’ll want a good soldering station, mine certainly earned its keep – and can follow directions carefully.

The supplier even provided all these little jumper wires already cut and stripped! Everything else needed cutting and stripping, though.

Eye recovery makes this a very slow job. Still doable; just… slow.

The supplier said it should take about four hours; it took me rather longer, mostly because of the current limitations in my vision slowing me down. I was also very careful and methodical, for the same reasons. Even with all that, it’s still just a one day project.

Paul asked me right about here whether I was making any headway on that dematerialisation circuit.

No. Stupid time lords.

This is what it looks like when you’ve finished the converter array and have the power rails all set up.

Time to test for magic smoke leaks.

The manual has you do testing at this point, and provides several key warnings. The checkbox-as-you-go system really makes it harder to miss things or to get things wrong, as long as you keep up with their grid system. Thanks to my still-recovering vision, I was checking every solder joint under magnifiers.

First try PASSES!

The kit has two ICs: THAT and OPA chips. I don’t really know why I find that hilarious, but I do.

THAT chip! OPA!

Once the chips have been installed in their sockets, it’s time to start adding I/O ports! This one has balanced microphone input, unbalanced line-level output, and external power connector socket. There’s no power switch; it’s just plugged in to turn it on, and you connect power FIRST – before plugging in to any other hardware like the microphone or the input card – and then remove power LAST, when taking down. This is opposite to my current hardware; I’ll have to add reminder labels.

That, and the whole phantom power thing. It’s an odd beast, for an odd sort of microphone.

I/O ports

Input is boosted enough and output is loud enough that you can test it with headphones; no separate amp required. At the highest power levels, I was honestly kind of astounded at how much gain it had, and quite pleased with the noise levels even at maximum boost. First test of the complete assembly passed just fine.

Yep! That’s a power light!

The printed control panel looks rather smart, I think. It only has the one control – a stepped gain control knob – but it has a good range of boost steps.

All done; all tests passed first try!

I can’t say a whole lot about performance yet – but I can say it’s very low noise at very high gain, and had a nice natural sound on my quick SM-58 tests. The real test will be the ribbon microphone I intend to use with this amp, which is also a kit. Despite fewer pieces, it’s a longer build – there’s materials time, and unfamiliar processes.

But I’ll get there. I’m just hoping my studio is up to gear this shiny. ^_^
 

This is a related article in the Studio Buildout Series, a collection of posts on building my own recording studio.

While recovering, I’ve been reading bits of Mike Senior’s Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio. It’s rather pleasant on the ego that a lot of his secrets are stuff I’m already doing, I have to admit. Ah, smug mode. But I have encountered a couple of facts I didn’t know about, regarding monitor speakers.

Senior is a big fan of dedicated speaker stands – heavy ones – to prevent bass resonance through floors and walls. Resonance leads to inaccurate bass mixes. I have in fact had bass resonance issues, and they have mislead me, so this is relevant to my interests. But if, like me, you lack room for stands, or have other issues that force your monitor speakers onto walls or shelves, he suggests these isolation pads, essentially to prevent the shelf from becoming a soundboard and creating resonance.

Now, as soon as I saw that product photo, I recognised the foam they used. It’s the same foam I used when building my mandolin and zouk travel cases. You can buy it for a few dollars a square foot, locally.

Even better than that, I have some left over from the case project, along with my trusty $3 thrift shop electric carving knife.

Voila:

cheeeeeeeeeap

Now, I did not have enough left to pad my Bose that way. I don’t use the Bose for monitoring, so it’s not that big a deal, but I did want to add some of that isolation since I tested them anyway, and found huge resonance off the shelf and wall. To some degree, that’s by speaker design – Bose wants that – but while I shouldn’t really use them for monitoring, I have done in the past, anyway.

So I studied the effect Senior described, and ended up building a mat out of alternating layers of reasonably thick leather (for mass) and this weird semi-corded velvet (also for mass, but also for motion-absorption) that I already had.

even cheaper

I did some before and after testing, and the differences were stark in both cases.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that to my surprise Bose speakers could have a bit of definition and precision, given ludicrous amounts of room treatment. But the bass was still a bit unfocused. With this padding thrown in, the low end has finally joined the party. The low bass popped right into focus, becoming genuinely crisp and well-defined. It was unanticipatedly, almost shockingly better. And the x77s’ low end – insofar as it has it – became almost laser-like.

It’s super-fun to listen to recordings with really well-engineered bass parts now, just to follow along. I’ve been listening to lots of recordings with particularly good bassists, just for that.

So, there y’go. $10 or less to improved monitoring. Who knew it could be so simple?

This post is part of The DIY Studio Buildout Series, on building out a home recording studio.