Durability of the ALDER H44 Ribbon Mic
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- Опубліковано 27 лип 2021
- Our patent-pending herringbone corrugation gives the H44 superior ribbon durability. Frequency response analysis has also shown that the herringbone corrugation method gives a frequency response that is nearly identical to standard corrugation in the H44.
Hear demos of the H44 and find out more at alderaudio.com
I think it's awesome how open and approachable about your product you are, I even felt bad for only liking dynamic mics for a sec)
Holy cow that's interesting! Super smart getting a patent, and super cool design.
Just stumbled onto this. I live for ribbon mics. I really need to check this out! Thank you!
I like the phantom protection. I have separate Triton devices to protect my ribbons from phantom. This is cool.
Brilliant! There’s my next mic for sure. I just finished the Lij podcast that featured you!
Right on, that's a neat design. I've always been wary of ribbons due to how fragile they are.
Really cool. Im considering a Ribbon Mic due to the annoyance of sibilance.
Great work, cool idea. Would be nice to try one.
So what’s the thickness of the ribbon material?
wow really cool..!!
Hi! I'm frim Argentina.
Can you show the aluminum corrugator? I want to make it. Thanks
If the angled/herringbone corrugation add more strength and rigidity, won’t it affect the flex of the ribbon making less sensitive to sound?? Haha curious but looks interesting!
Good question. That is exactly what I expected and I had hoped to perhaps use any sound difference to advantage, but what I found in practice is what ribbon makers have known for a long time. As long as the ribbon is uniform (not piston corrugation), then the response is dominated by the mass of the ribbon and the resonant frequency. These can be equal between standard corrugation and herringbone, and they do not sound different, so long as the ribbons are tensioned to the same resonant frequency.
@@alderaudio that is interesting!!
How "thick" is your ribbon? Most ribbon mics are about 2.5 microns. For the public, a human hair is about 100 microns thick.
Can you point me to some additional songs or demos to really feel out the sound of this mic? I am looking for a ribbon mic for vintage-style vocals.
Yeah, there's a handful of demos around. The best place is my demo page if you haven't seen it, www.alderaudio.com/demos, but Mixdown Online did a great singer songwriter mix walkthrough that used it and has some samples right here: ua-cam.com/video/VZ9UTUYUcnU/v-deo.html
👏🏻🙌👍🏽✊🏿
But this rigidity doesn't affect the frequency spectrum?
When tested we find no sonic difference between the two corrugations, and they are not distinguishable by ear either. I believe this is due to the effect of sound wave transmission into the ribbon being dominated by the effect of mass.
How much effective gain is required to yield lower noise (hiss) when using this microphone?
Thanks for the question, though it is not straightforward to answer. Hiss can come from different places and in most cases I can think of additional gain isn't necessarily going to help. If you've got a particular problem and want to give me more information so I can take a crack at answering, feel free to reach out on the website here: www.alderaudio.com/contact
No more fragile rinbons!!!! Yeah!!!!
I wonder if it’s less sensitive if more durable. I recon ribbons supposed to move a lot. Maybe you wouldn’t be able to detect a diff....
Yeah, so to my own surprise, the corrugation causes no discernible change to the ear or to a frequency response measurement when you compare herringbone vs traditional corrugation. We have tested it. Our conclusion is as long as the ribbon is still vibrating as one section (as opposed to piston corrugation), then the response is dominated by the mass of the ribbon and the resonant frequency, which can be the same with the new corrugation.
While the ribbon corrugation design is cool and all, I get a sense other aspects of this mic might not be figured out too well. For example, the body of the mic seems like it has a lot of space for resonances to form inside. Also, why use a transformer? Transformerless is way better for transient response. At least so Ive understood..
Good questions, and thanks for stopping by. As far as the transformer, all ribbon mics have them, just due to their natural output, as opposed to dynamics where sometimes you can go transformerless. But Ribbons are also better for transients than dynamics due to sensitivity of the ribbon so it tends to work out. Quality and design of transformer does make a big difference though.
As far as space in the mic causing resonance - the physics going on inside the mic is quite a bit more in depth than that one factor. I won't get deep into it here, but I can assure you the full design of the geometry of the mic was intentionally developed and tested to get to the final result.
Ribbon mics must have transformers because the impedance of the ribbon is usually about 0.2 ohms. You MUST raise that up with a transformer if you want a usable output.
@@ScottGrammer ok. I probably don't know enough about electronics to actually understand why. I do get what impedance is, and how transformers work for impedance. But what I don't know and understand is why do you need a certain impedance amount in order for the signal to get properly amplified?
I do know that when you look at a dynamic mic, there is a sonic difference, for the transient response, when you use a transformer and when you don't. And I clearly prefer the transformerless mods that Ive heard examples of.
@@rist98 Transformers work kind of like the transmission in a car. A car's transmission swaps RPM for torque, or torque for RPM. A transformer swaps current for voltage, or voltage for current. There is no power amplification in either case, merely a change in the way the power is expressed. Impedance, in an electrical circuit, is a way of describing whether one needs voltage more than current or current more than voltage. The impedance of a ribbon mic's ribbon is very low, and low impedance devices are current-oriented, with little voltage. Unfortunately, the mic preamps we all use are of a much higher impedance, and they need more voltage than the very low impedance ribbon can produce. Without this voltage, there will not be enough signal for the mic preamp to work with.
By using an internal transformer, a ribbon mic can trade its current for voltage, thus creating enough signal for the mic preamp to work with. There is another way that the transformer in a ribbon mic helps: If we were to move the transformer to the inside of the mic preamp, and run the raw signal from the ribbon down the mic cable, we would lose much of the signal along the way because a typical 20 foot mic cable, which might have a total resistance in its wires of about 1/2 ohm, would turn 80% or so of the signal from the mic into heat before it ever got to the preamp. So the transformer is necessary, and it must be as close to the ribbon as possible, i.e., inside the mic.
If you think about how ribbon mics are made and how dynamic mics are made, they actually work the same way - ribbon mics ARE dynamic mics, because they work on the principle of a dynamo. Moving a conductor through a strong magnetic field produces a voltage that is proportional to how fast the conductor moves through the field. Ribbon mics only move a single conductor - the ribbon - through the field, and so they don't produce much voltage. The mics we think of as dynamics, which are more properly called "moving coil" mics, move dozens or hundreds of conductors through the field - each turn of wire in the voice coil counts as a conductor - and so they make more voltage. A transformer just synthesizes those extra turns of wire for the ribbon.
I hope this helps.
@@ScottGrammer Yeah, I pretty much knew all of that. I also know transformers work via the magnetic field, hence why they slightly muddy up the impulse response.
I also know how mic preamps work via Voltage. But my question is why. Why can't op amps work via current. If ribbons have current, more than voltage, why not use what they have and amplify via that?
I suspect this might be a dumb question, for anyone who is actually well versed in the subject of electronic amplifiers. But still, its smth Ive wondered.
a dimpled ribbon is another option.
Any ribbon would survive being dropped like that, phantom power is fine on a ribbon, provided you aren't using TRS jacks, like in a patchbay, and if it can't survive in front of a kick drum what exactly has been accomplished? Doesn't seem any more useful than a standard ribbon, which isn't very fragile to begin with, unless you've removed the windscreens. Just put a $10 pop filter in front of it and you can a ribbon fearlessly on anything.
Pop filters affect frequency response...
if it really is ALDER net ADLER frick it