Apogee Mini-me

[johnk]

This is my very first post, but i just had to share this info with someone......

I just purchased and tried out an Apogee Mini-me yesterday. I basically got it to record my band at live gigs and rehearsals onto a Marantz pmd670 digi CF recorder. The Marantz actually sounded pretty good on it's own, however the mic pres seem to distort fairly easily with condensor mics, requiring you to use the -20db pad. Many have also complained about the pmd670's mic pre S/N ratio which is actually pretty poor at -65db, but they seem to be a bit better than that when recording loud sources.

My first few recordings were using a matched pair of Rode NT5's, which are actually a nice set of 1/2" condensor mics. I did have to use the -20db pad on the pmd670, otherwise the mic pres would distort when recording a fairly loud rock band (mine). Once I got the levels right, the recordings were very good.

My next two recordings were done with a Studio Projects LSD-2, with two 1 inch "vertically stacked" diaphrams. The recordings were also very good, however, they were both done outdoors on a windy day and I had to use the LSD-2's windscreen. I also had to use the -20db pad on this mic as well.

It's kind of difficult to get the Marantz's recording levels quickly, especially at the gig and you happen to be in the band that your recording. A couple of times I was clipping the digital content, while other times i was clipping the mic pres. Once I got an estimated "handle" on the levels situation, the recordings were very listenable.

This is where the Apogee Mini-me comes in....... I hooked it up to test it with the Marantz pmd670 last night, not to test it while recording a band, but to listen to it at home in a quiet bedroom. The idea behind getting the Mini-me was to get MUCH higher quality mic pres and to get a MUCH better A/D convertor as well. The pmd670 has an S/PDIF digi input and the Mini-me has an S/PDIF output. While the pmd670's highest quality recording format is only 48 or 44.1/16 bit, the Mini-me has the A/D settings to match (as well as alot of others). The nice thing is, the Mini-me dithers it's 24 bit output to 16 bit using their, now famous, and widely used UV22HR processing which makes 16 bit sound just about as detailed as 24 bit word lengths.

The Apogee also has some much nicer limiting and compression that the Marantz's as well, so this will make getting good levels ALOT easier on the fly.

Upon my intial tests, while the RodeNT5's were pretty quiet, I could hear a faint 60hz hum, using either the Mini-me's headphone out (which is A/D) and I could also hear it using the Marantz's headphone out, which i is post A/D, or actually A/D/A. Then I tried the Studio Projects LSD-2. The 60hz hum was really loud and unacceptable! It got a considerably more quiet if i ran the Marantz pmd670 on batteries instead of it's power supply, but still was unacceptable. So to troubleshoot it, I bypassed the Mini-me, went into the Marantz mic pres directly using it's own phantom power (using the pmd670's AC power supply) and it was noticibly quieter. Then i tried it using the internal batteries and it was GONE! This lead me to believe that the Mini-me's, inexpensive AC supply was adding alot of 60hz hum to it's phantom power.

Today, I hooked up a highly regulated and filtered 12V supply to the Mini-me and ALL of the hum was GONE! It kind of surprised me that Apogee would even sell their high quality and somewhat expensive dual mic pre with such a piece of crap, but I was intending to run it on a 10000maH battery at the gigs anyway. it'll run at least 9-10 hours that way. The bottom line is, if you have a Mini'me and intend to use it at home, get a decent regualted and filtered power supply for it.

Anyway, these were my findings, and while at first I thought that I might be spending way too much money on the Apogee to "upgrade" the Marantz,(and even possibly going backwards!) I now must admit that the Marantz's recordings are 10X better, using Apogee Mic pres, limiting and A/D convertors.

just my 2 cents on these two items.....................

regards,
johnk