New microphone

[Doug Marmion]

Hi,

Bartek Plichta gave me permission to post the 
following information, which comes from a posting 
of his to the Akustyk* mailing list.

cheers,
doug marmion

* Akustyk is a vowel analysis software package 
that Bartek built as an add-on to Praat (the 
powerful, free, but complex to use, acoustic 
analysis software). Further info about Akustyk is 
here: <http://bartus.org/akustyk/>



>Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 11:22:58 -0500
>From: Bartlomiej Plichta <plichtab at msu.edu>
>Subject: Re: New microphone

[snip...]

>I thought I would give you and update on a new 
>microphone that is one of the best speech 
>recording tools I've ever seen. Beyerdynamic of 
>Germany was kind enough to let me collaborate 
>with them on a new design to their recent Opus 
>55 Mk II microphone. It is a new microphone and 
>can be easily confused with its predecessor, 
>Opus 55. This one, however, is called Opus 55 Mk 
>II.
>
>The Opus 55 Mk II is a medium sensitivity, 
>omnidirectional microphone, designed to be 
>neck-worn. It has an ultra-flat frequency 
>response and records speech with incredible 
>fidelity and detail.
>
>One of the most difficult tests for any 
>professional microphone is vowel nasalization. 
>Nasalized vowels have a very complex spectrum, 
>particularly close to the fundamental frequency, 
>below F1, and between F1 and F2 (for most 
>vowels, anyway). If the microphone is not able 
>to produce a detailed and flat recording, one 
>will not be able to analyze nasalization 
>properly. The images below show spectrograms and 
>narrow-band spectra of two Polish words: /deby/ 
>(non-nasal) and /d´by/ (nasal). The Opus 55 Mk 
>II was able to record the spectral differences 
>beautifully and reliably, probably better than 
>any other microphone I've tested. The recording 
>was done with a Sound Devices MixPre 
>preamplifier and a Sony TCD-D100 DAT recorder at 
>16-bit/48,000 Hz. You can download a sample 
>phrase here 
><http://www.msu.edu/%7Eplichtab/media/BD_opus_sample.wav> 
>(/czarna krowa w kropki bordo gryz½a traw´ 
>kr´c´c mordà/).
>
>Akustyk records very realistic nasalizatio n 
>values (A1-P0 and A1-P1) for these two vowels:
>
>*deby (non-nasal)*: a1-p0=10.30; a1-p1=28.66
>*d´by (nasal)* : a1-p0=1.47; a1-p1=18.81
>
>The Beyerdynamic Opus 55 Mk II is available in 
>the US as a special order only. It will also 
>need an in-line phantom power adapter to be able 
>to work in wired applications. Those of you who 
>live in Europe should have no trouble ordering 
>it. In the US, I recommend BH PhotoVideo in New 
>York or online.