On 09/15/2018 08:12 AM, hacklava wrote:
On Sat, 15 Sep 2018 14:52:03 +0100
Chris Woolf <ch...@chriswoolf.co.uk> wrote:
How open these sort of products can be in terms of internal architecture
and calibration is another (commercial) problem.
Ah, yes, calibration. I imagine that the H3V is not individually
calibrated (like the Ambeo). That means frequency response and polar
patterns will not be "perfect", but I presume they will be good enough
(they say the capsules are matched). Even if they are not "perfect",
will those errors be perceptually relevant to recordings made with it?
At least some secrecy
is essential to their business model, to avoid making reverse
engineering too easy...
Hmmm, for a first order microphone it does not look to me like you need
any reverse engineering to see what is going on in it. Unless you mean
the practical engineering choices made to create an affordable product
with enough quality to satisfy the target market. I like what I see so
far (but that could change when I get hold of one :-).
and therefore losing the mass market that their
product has to be based on.
I read your "it's the economy, stupid" argument. Now there's a market.
Hallelujah. Consumers of the world, praise secrecy.
My point is that all the hardware is available to build an Ambisonics microphone, there's
no fundamental research to be done (at least for a simple FOA microphone), and Ambisonics
is patent free. That's exactly why Zoom was able to create a new consumer product.
There's probably more plastic than anything else in this microphone. It will good enough,
and a lot of fun to use, but still... The missing "soft" part is calibration...
The new Zoom H3V can record A-format, that is, the signals coming
directly from the capsules. That means that you can calibrate it[*], and
use an external encoder to convert A format to B format. The B format
performance will be determined by the quality of the calibration
measurements and the algorithm (and tradeofs) of the calibration process.
A custom calibration can compensate for gain mismatches between
capsules, frequency response of the capsules, and to some degree
mechanical inaccuracies, but not polar pattern mismatches of the capsules.
You of course cannot improve the raw signal to noise ratio of the
capsules and preamps themselves (and of course the raw frequency
response), but judging from previous Zoom products (I have used the H2N)
those numbers should be acceptable.
I'm looking forward to buying one and putting it through my measuring
and calibration procedures. I will be able to do "before" and "after"
plots of all the parameters... :-)
-- Fernando
[*] the specs I read so far are a bit unclear regarding the USB audio
interface behavior, apparently you can send to the computer all four
signals (but which ones? can you send A-format?) but it is not clear if
you can, at the same time, send from the computer to, say, the line
outputs. If that is the case it would make calibration much simpler
(otherwise the playback equipment and recording equipment are not sample
rate locked and the mismatch has to be compensated for, something I was
doing for calibrating my SpHEAR FrankenMic, an H2N with an external
"correct" tetrahedral capsule array).
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