small mic pre for Digigram VX pocket soundcard?

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Kvaa wrote:
> can you recomend me good small mic pre (up to 200$), with phantom,
battery
> (or USB ,if exists) powered, to use with my Digigram VXpocket card
for
> field recordings?

Well I think the built in micpres are pretty decent actually, and
better than anything you are going to find for $200 for sure. You might
better spend your money on a good portable phantom power supply, to
save your laptop batteries.

But Mike Rivers has also used one of the these VX Pocket Cards,
Mike?

Will Miho
NY Music & TV Audio Guy
Staff Audio / Fox News Channel / M-AES
"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away..." Tom Waits

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Mike, I agree that the Denecke InBox (originally sold under the Zefiro
name) is nice, but I suspect its circuitry could use an update, plus it
has several other problems. The only type of phantom power supply that
can be used with it would be one that blocks DC from its outputs; the
InBox will play dead if the 48 Volts DC is fed to its inputs. It does
work well with Denecke's own PS-2 phantom power supply, however, which
in its default configuration has DC blocking capacitors on its outputs.

Also, the gain pots of the InBox are unmarked apart from a tiny,
inscrutable indentation, and are uncalibrated. Finally, if you are
using a 9V battery to power the thing, don't try to stretch the battery
life; replace the battery as soon as the LED indicator tells you to.
The circuitry becomes quite noisy when the battery voltage is low.

I use a VXPocket card a fair amount, but only via its S/P-DIF input.
Like you, I tested the analog inputs exactly once while I was in the
"getting to know you" phase with the card. I didn't see or hear
anything wrong with them, and the specs are surprisingly good, so it's
pure prejudice on my part that I've never seriously considered even
giving them a fair test with, say, voice and piano. Intuitively I
"know" that they can't sound good. You know, <internal thought process>
surface-mount ICs generate tremendous amounts of transient IM and other
harsh-sounding garbage; high-end preamps should have transformers
and/or tubes, and they cost over $1000 for two channels and are rack
sized and give you a backache from carrying them. So how could a tiny
cracker-sized card possibly have good enough analog circuitry for my
precious recordings </internal thought process>?

It would be a hoot if these things actually sounded good, and if these
past several years, I didn't really need to use outboard preamps and
converters for live recordings.

--best regards

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

In article <1110300336.587366.137250@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> DSatz@msn.com writes:

> I use a VXPocket card a fair amount, but only via its S/P-DIF input.

> It would be a hoot if these things actually sounded good, and if these
> past several years, I didn't really need to use outboard preamps and
> converters for live recordings.

I used mine all the time to record off the radio to an MP3 file. <g>

But I have used it with the Mackie 1402 VLZ Pro and it works just
fine. It's just that the Jukebox 3 sounds just as good as it needs to
(I've never done a shootout between them) for the application and it's
easier to carry. I bitch about the mini jack for the Jukebox input,
but if I used the laptop with the VX Pocket for the same knock-around
kind of jobs, I'd bitch about the flimsy multipin connector that
connects the breakout cable with the XLR and RCA (S/PDIF and SMPTE)
connectors to the PCMCIA card.

For live multitrack work, the Mackie Onyx mixer with the Firewire
interface together with the laptop shows some promise, but it's really
no easier than carrying the Mackie HDR, and I have more confidence in
the reliability of the HDR than I do in the laptop computer. If I
actually did a multitrack remote recording with the Onyx/Laptop, I'd
probably move the files over to the Mackie HDR for mixing on a real
console, just because that's the way I work.

Oh, what were we talking about? And why?



--
I'm really Mike Rivers (mrivers@d-and-d.com)
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo