Audio lingo: Phantom power

Phantom power (or +48 V) is the description of a certain powering commonly needed for condenser microphones but are sometimes used for other equipment as well. It is common to see on both mixers and audio interfaces these days.

Before buying a condenser microphone, make sure that you have the phantom power to supply it with.

M-Audio MicroTrack II

microtrackii_big.jpg

M-Audio has now released the follow-up to it’s hand held recorded MicroTrack. MicroTrack II features 2-channel WAV (BWF) and MP3 recording and playback. It is battery operated and stores on either CompactFlash or microdrives. For connection, MicroTrack II has balanced ¼” TRS inputs with line inputs and 48V phantom-powered mic preamps. It supposedly has extended input gain range compared to the original MicroTrack.

Much more info at M-Audios website.

Aaahing and gurgling

Sometimes all you need are short sounds for your podcast. Perhaps you’re ending one segment and starting another and need something to divide the two? Try these for that…

As with all clips on Audival, you can use this for free in your podcast

 
icon for podpress  Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
icon for podpress  Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Vibes

If you think this sounds like something played back on crappy old fluttering tape then you’ve gotten my idea. This whole clip is meant to sound like something from an old Hong Kong movie.

As with all clips on Audival, you can use this for free in your podcast

 
icon for podpress  Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Dealing with noise

broom-2-773337.jpg

You can consider this post a complement to the post “Cleaning it up”which explains how you can deal with pops and clicks, as well as cutting out unwanted sounds from your recordings. While pops and clicks can be called “noise” in one sense, it’s not actually the kind of noise that we usually mean when we’re talking about noise in audio discussions.
More →

Audio lingo: types of noise

To most people noise might just be noise, but in the audio world there’s more than one type of noise. The various types are named after colors, such as white and pink. According to Wikipedia, the color names for these different types of sounds are derived from a loose analogy between the spectrum of frequencies of sound wave present in the sound and the equivalent spectrum of light wave frequencies. That is, if the sound wave pattern of “blue noise” were translated into light waves, the resulting light would be blue, and so on.

The rest of this article (with a lot of technical explanations) can be found on this Wikipedia page.

The commonly accepted colors are white, pink, blue, brown, purple and grey. Sometimes the names differ, and some wants to add other colors to the list as well.

Nady introduces USB-1C condenser microphone

nadyusb.jpg

Nady Systems recently announced the introduction of their new condenser microphone, the USB-1C. Using the supplied USB cable, the mic connects directly to any computer with a USB 2.0 (or higher) input port for easy plug-and-play operation.
More →