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anonymous 8 September 2006

A warm hello from the cold north germany to you all.
My name is Jakob and I'm a sound-engineer, working mostly indoors. Lately -quite suddenly actually- I seem to come across more and more nice and interesting sounds in my surrounding that I feel like using in my work, -and of course always when they cross my way, there's no way to record them. I figured a simple highly directive, good sounding and extremely small rig would be useful since -first- I'm mostly carrying some sort of backpack on my backpacking back anyway and -second- I could impress a good friend of mine, an old journalist who wishes the good old days to come back, when they were sent out in the field with tape NAGRAS instead of first generation minidisc recorders. Now a shotgun is far from small, requires phantom power and since I'm working with some Schoeps mk capsules indoors anyway and a mk41 is missing I could drink two beers with one straw by getting myself the cmbi preamp with that nice little capsule and the tiny Sony md recorder that does linear pcm which I've got as a birthday gift would finally get a chance to prove some sense in its existance. MD recorder plus microphone, -can it get any smaller?
Now, does anyone have some experience with that cmbi thing? I guess there's less headroom, maybe more noise than with the normal cmc due to the lower voltage at the capsule? Any other drawbacks? Schoeps also doesn't provide any info on its frequency range.

Many Thanks in advance

Jakob

Comments

anonymous Sun, 09/10/2006 - 00:37

Thanks for the replys so far. One thing: the Micrptrock is out of the game anyway, so there's no point elaborating on that. I already have a tiny MD-Recorder which records in 16bit 41kHz uncompressed pcm. It's preamps are MUCH quieter than those of the microtrack, it's not made of plastic, the storage medium is cheap and replacable and it's smaller with a replacable battery. I don't think you undrerstood my question:

DOES ANYBODY HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE WITH THE SCHOEPS CMBI?

@Teddy: look, I want to use a mk41 on the cmbi. Does that not give you the slightest hint of what I want to record? What's the point in an ortf-solution for me when I want it to be SMALL, and HIGHLY DIRECTIVE?

@quellquist: the cmbi -that's my humble hope- would solve all the phantom power issues. That is actually the reason why I am posting here and asking for your kind advice.

If someone could only tell me about the CMBI and if it's worth buying, I'd be very thankful. The only alternative for me would be a cmc6 with a sound-devices mp-1 preamp or phantom power adapter but compared to the CMBI solution there's drawbacks regarding size, weight, simplicity, battery-life, -remember, this is for something I want to carry with me all the time, like a pen. The cmbi runs on battery for80 hours!

So, I hope there is someone out there who can actually answer my question after all.

anonymous Sun, 09/10/2006 - 04:56

.it sounds like you have it figured out already, what do you want to know? cmbi is convenient and portable, and the mk41 is highly directional..the minidisc is small, and the whole lot runs on batteries...so go for it...does it sound like its CMC6 cousin?? to me, no. but in the capacity you are using it, I dont think youll lack for anything.

check the rec.audio.film.sound google/yahoo group. Youll find more answers about cmbi experience there. and Some friendly advice: dont be so snarky with people that offer you help.

.

cherrycore wrote: Thanks for the replys so far. One thing: the Micrptrock is out of the game anyway, so there's no point elaborating on that. I already have a tiny MD-Recorder which records in 16bit 41kHz uncompressed pcm. It's preamps are MUCH quieter than those of the microtrack, it's not made of plastic, the storage medium is cheap and replacable and it's smaller with a replacable battery. I don't think you undrerstood my question:

DOES ANYBODY HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE WITH THE SCHOEPS CMBI?

@Teddy: look, I want to use a mk41 on the cmbi. Does that not give you the slightest hint of what I want to record? What's the point in an ortf-solution for me when I want it to be SMALL, and HIGHLY DIRECTIVE?

@quellquist: the cmbi -that's my humble hope- would solve all the phantom power issues. That is actually the reason why I am posting here and asking for your kind advice.

If someone could only tell me about the CMBI and if it's worth buying, I'd be very thankful. The only alternative for me would be a cmc6 with a sound-devices mp-1 preamp or phantom power adapter but compared to the CMBI solution there's drawbacks regarding size, weight, simplicity, battery-life, -remember, this is for something I want to carry with me all the time, like a pen. The cmbi runs on battery for80 hours!

So, I hope there is someone out there who can actually answer my question after all.

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