2018-05-18 18:27:21

Hello guys! I started to think about buy bineural microphones. I am interested in only this mic, which i can bring in my ear, without artificial head and other accessories.
Anyone have an experience with using them and which models?
I looked for about, and first I found roland CS10EM, this is microphone and headphones combo.
It is very good idea, because i can record and monitor in the same time. And it is only one, which are accessible in my country, poland. Does anyone have experience with using them? I am afraid about feedback during monitoring. And second think about i am afraid is, that is in ear headphones and we can't hear normally what is around us, during recording city sound, and we have to rely only on monitor information. Is it possible to move around using only sound from monitor? I think yes, because they are bineural mic and it's almost the same sound as we hear, but i preffer to ask. And in this device, microphones are outside of our ear, because it's headphones, and i don't know how big impact it will be in bineural recordings.

The second model is sound professionals called sp-TFB-2. This mic are no headphones. Undoubtedly, the advantage of this device is that, microphones will be much closer to the ear drums. But as i said, i don't know really how big impact it has on later recordings. The second, of coure, i can put it in my ear and hear normally.
The first disadvantage, i can't monitoring during recording, for example to set volume of recording etc but this is obvious. The second disadvantage, i have to buy them from usa, because i can not find them in poland.

I am waiting for your opinions about this devices, and about bineural microphones generally.

2018-05-18 18:58:16 (edited by the_ruler_of_dark_forces 2018-05-18 19:01:37)

I myself use Soundman OKM II Classic Solo. When reading your description it seams that they are quite similar to the Sound proffessionals microphones you described. They are quite comfortable in ears and do not mute the sounds coming from outside at all. Yes you cannot monitor the recording with it, but I usually set the levels, record a short sample and then listen to it with my headphones. When I'm doing more casual recordings, I often use auto gain and it works quite well.
They also come with the clamps which you can fasten to your clothes and so you can create the so called pseudobinaural recordings.
You can order these from Thomann and I think the shipping cost from Germany to Poland should not be that big.
https://www.thomann.de/intl/ee/barrierf … ?AR=157085

2018-05-18 20:33:19

Hi.
I am an owner of the Ohrwurm 3D microphones. These are hand made microphones from Germany which ar on the market since about a year or so.
You can just put them onto your ears, they are secured by a plastic strap going around your ear, you get a wind and a pop protection with the microphones, together with some aditional ear straps, depending on how large your ears are.
As an aditional bonus, you can also use them as a sterio mic setup by turning the microphone capsuls around.
They are priced at about 150 Euros and can also be exported to other cuntrys, I would contact the producer of the microphones first to see if if you need to do extra stepts.
I have a website link for you containing some audio examples of the microphone, the first one is from a small thunderstorm with light rain and thunder in the distance, recorded without the windscreen, and the second recording is from a fair in northern Germany, this time, the wind screen is clipped to the microphones.
http://www.ohrwurmaudio.eu/ohrwurm-3d-k … piele.html


Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2018-05-18 22:53:42

the_ruler_of_dark_forces wrote:

I myself use Soundman OKM II Classic Solo. When reading your description it seams that they are quite similar to the Sound proffessionals microphones you described. They are quite comfortable in ears and do not mute the sounds coming from outside at all. Yes you cannot monitor the recording with it, but I usually set the levels, record a short sample and then listen to it with my headphones. When I'm doing more casual recordings, I often use auto gain and it works quite well.
They also come with the clamps which you can fasten to your clothes and so you can create the so called pseudobinaural recordings.
You can order these from Thomann and I think the shipping cost from Germany to Poland should not be that big.
https://www.thomann.de/intl/ee/barrierf … ?AR=157085

Do you get some windscreens in box or you need buy separatelly?

2018-05-19 05:50:47

No, they don't come with a windscreen. You should be able to buy it separately, but it is quite expensive. I myself do not actually have one, because they aren't so sensitive to the wind and I usually don't do recordings when there's a stormy weather outside.

2018-05-19 13:38:34

Hi @papierek, I use the Sound professionals SP-TFB2 binaural mics, they are quite good, but they are also sensitive to wind, so I would suggest purchasing wind screens for them, I have a sample recording that you can listen to, it is very short, but I think you will get an idea of what they sound like.
http://anyaudio.net/listen?audio=C3Z1t0r6vN

2018-05-19 16:06:55

@6. That was a nice recording. Are you recording into a portable recorder, what is it? Thanks.

2018-05-19 16:28:34

Yes indeed, I record into a Zoom H4NPro.

2018-05-19 17:36:24

That sounds like a useful bit of kit. If you have any accessibility requirements, have you had any problems operating it?

2018-05-20 01:54:34 (edited by papierek 2018-05-20 01:56:15)

Donavin.Liebgott wrote:

Hi @papierek, I use the Sound professionals SP-TFB2 binaural mics, they are quite good, but they are also sensitive to wind, so I would suggest purchasing wind screens for them, I have a sample recording that you can listen to, it is very short, but I think you will get an idea of what they sound like.
http://anyaudio.net/listen?audio=C3Z1t0r6vN

Unfortunatelly, it's a bit difficult to buy this mics from usa to poland, and probably a bit expensive, so i probably have to forgot about them and choose between roland CS10EM and soundman okm ii classic.

2018-05-20 03:12:45

flackers wrote:

That sounds like a useful bit of kit. If you have any accessibility requirements, have you had any problems operating it?

The menus are confusing at first, but other than that it works okay, oh yes and setting the gain is quite meticulous, but other than that, no complaints.

2018-05-20 11:20:30 (edited by flackers 2018-05-20 11:33:51)

@Donavin. Thanks, I might get one as it seems it also works as a 2 in 2 out interface.
@ Papierek, I bought a pair of the sound professionals myself. There are several quite expensive shipping options to Europe, but one of them is USPS first class international, and it's $25.27 to Poland. I'm in the UK and The only thing I don't like about buying outside the EU is that if you want to return stuff, you'll have to pay return shipping which might be more expensive, and if they choose to, the seller could charge a 20% restocking fee and only give store credit as a refund, something we're protected against inside the EU thanks to the distance selling regulations or whatever it's called now. Maybe the US have their own regulations to protect consumers, but I don't think it extends to people in Europe or wherever.

2018-05-20 12:25:50

Yes it does work as an interface, when I bought my microphones, I payed 12,50USD to ship it to South Africa, so it wasn't that expensive, how ever it does take a while to get here. My zoom I bought locally.

2018-05-20 13:34:32

Hi.
Well, you can import the Orhwurm Mics to polant as well, a friend of mine lives in the netherlands and bought them as well, so I guess it shouldn't be a big problem.

Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2018-05-20 13:54:32

I buy quite a lot of stuff from Germany, and the postage is always very reasonable, not much more than I'd pay to ship sstuff inside the UK. I'm just as happy to buy from places like Germany and Netherlands as I am the UK because the postage is reasonable and I've always had good experiences. I don't know how that might change when the UK leaves the EU though.

2018-05-20 14:03:33

thanks everyone for opinions. Now i really don't know what to buy smile i don't know what are the differences or something? I read a lot of positive opinions about soundmans, about roland cs10Em also, but they are headphones and it can be not good if you want to move around. And of course Orhwurm mics looks also ok. So... i am confused and i don't know what to buy. SP are also good but i drop this option.

2018-05-20 16:29:57

Hi.
Well, the advantage of the Ohrwurms is that you just put them lightly on to your ears, not like a headset, a bit like an over ear headset where the microphone just lightly touches your ear, even though it's on your ear technically, you still can move around, even on the outside with traffic and so on without any difficultys, I would advise you though that you let the cables run through your shirt or jacket and have the recorder in a pocket of some sorts, that's how I do it.

Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2018-05-20 18:58:58 (edited by the_ruler_of_dark_forces 2018-05-20 19:16:25)

Here are a couple of examples recorded with Soundman microphones and Olympus dm5 as the recorder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bbdl0lqwlyroa … e.mp3?dl=1
This is a recording where you can hear a kind of plane flying around and some talking. The microphones were in my ears.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jngf9xm8nx1ip … s.mp3?dl=1
This is a recording where one partially sighted and three blind maniacs have some fun with the fireworks celebrating the newyear. In the beginning it is quite mild but later on it becomes much more hardcore.
The microphones were fastened to my shoulders.
The talking in these recordings is in Estonian, except a couple of phrases which are in English. So you won't understand anything unless you happen to know Finnish, then you might get some parts of it. But I think they give an example how these microphones sound like.
And if you happen to wonder, what does "Süüde", the word repeated often in the fireworks recording mean, then in English it is ignition.

2018-05-20 19:51:04

Cool. Does the Olympus power the microphone, or do you need a separate battery pack?

2018-05-20 20:04:43

No, a battery pack is not necessary.

2018-05-20 23:15:19

the_ruler_of_dark_forces wrote:

Here are a couple of examples recorded with Soundman microphones and Olympus dm5 as the recorder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bbdl0lqwlyroa … e.mp3?dl=1
This is a recording where you can hear a kind of plane flying around and some talking. The microphones were in my ears.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jngf9xm8nx1ip … s.mp3?dl=1
This is a recording where one partially sighted and three blind maniacs have some fun with the fireworks celebrating the newyear. In the beginning it is quite mild but later on it becomes much more hardcore.
The microphones were fastened to my shoulders.
The talking in these recordings is in Estonian, except a couple of phrases which are in English. So you won't understand anything unless you happen to know Finnish, then you might get some parts of it. But I think they give an example how these microphones sound like.
And if you happen to wonder, what does "Süüde", the word repeated often in the fireworks recording mean, then in English it is ignition.

Quite nice fireworks!!! smile But it's a bit pity that you used automating gain control instead of set manually one level of everything, because when is the louder sound or when you start speaking everything is more quiet for a while.
And one question, if you put them into your ear, I understand that they are just inside your ear like headphones, can you hear completelly normally?

2018-05-21 00:32:14

Hi, I'm really considering getting some of these, like the sound professionals.
what recorder or device would you guys recommend from an accessibility point of view?  I had a talking one a while back, but I can't remember what that was. 
there's a show called Window to the magic podcast which is all in binaural audio, and I'd love to give them some samples when I head out to Paris later this year for example. 
Have been considering binaural microphones for ages though.  the blind version of photos. smile

2018-05-21 07:26:34

So I was one of those blind pyromaniacs in that recording.

2018-05-21 08:47:13

In my opinion the auto gain was necessary because otherwise the dynamic range will be just huge. As the bangs are the loudest points in the recording, it would be almost impossible to hear the talking.
Yes, I can hear normally while wearing the microphones, almost to the point that I can very easily forget I'm wearing them.

2018-05-21 09:04:00

great new year big_smile when i will buy it i probably will do my own fireworks record smile so great, probably i will buy them. I thought that if you have it inside your ear it mute all sounds a bit, but if you said no, i'll buy them probably