Studio Projects B1

This microphone is built in China by 797 Audio in Beijing using high-quality components, including Wima capacitors, but designed in the USA by Brent Casey.



The B1 offers a fixed-cardioid pattern with switchable pad and roll-off features. The centre-terminated, large-diaphragm capacitor capsule (3µm gold evaporated Mylar) requires a standard 48V phantom power and has a transformerless output. Personally I find the additional features unnecessary, and seldom use them. The B1 comes with a shock mount and foam wind shield, not to be confused with a pop filter. The shockmount is a custom plastic moulding that clips to the bottom of the mic suspended within a metal ring using fabric-covered elastic belts.

I found the shock mount to be a little flimsy and the mic moves around inside it, although will not fall out accidentally. I’m not sure why a foam windshield is included as this cannot be used in place of a pop shield, and is only suitable for situations where there is wind. If you are planning to use the mic outdoors, then you will need the wind shield, but a proper pop shield must be used for recording vocals.

Put to the test

As a vocal mic the B1 produced smooth, soft recordings with male vocals and works very well for rap/hip hop vocals without any EQ.
With acoustic instruments the mic was quite brittle and needed a bit of work with EQ to get a good sound.

The B1 is has a lot of features, apart from multiple polar patterns, and would make a good all round “first mic” for a project/home studio.

Specifications
Capsule	1.3” Externally Polarized Condenser
Sensitivity	18mV/Pa
Frequency Response	20-20 000 Hz
Equivalent Noise	12 dB-A
Polar Pattern	Cardioid
Max SPL	137 dB (SPL)

Review by Jaime Lopes for Headroom Productions

Choosing a PC for audio work

Assuming that budget is a concern here are my recommendations on what to look for when choosing a PC to use for audio recording:

CPU
Of all the components inside the PC, the CPU is by far the most critical. Get the fastest one you can afford. There is a big debate between manufacturers, which we won’t get into. The important thing to look for is ‘dual core’. Computers are only designed to do one thing at a time. The operating system will allocate time to each task running and continuously cycle through each, giving the impression that several programs are running. A dual core system is therefore actually able to do… WOW!!! TWO things at a time. Although this might not seem to make much difference, it does. The general rule is that a machine with two 1.5 GHz CPU’s will perform better than one 3GHz CPU.

RAM
The more you use virtual instruments and samplers, the more RAM you will need. It is recommended to have at least 1Gb for general audio production. You must pay attention to how the RAM will affect the speed of your system. E.g. an Intel P4 CPU can send data to the rest of the system at 800mhz which means that you will need a pair of DDR400 RAM modules (each module can cope with 400mhz) to take advantage of this. Therefore you should buy your RAM in pairs, e.g. if you want 1Gb total RAM, get two 512Mb modules.

HDD
Almost every DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) manufacturer recommends that you have two separate Hard Disk Drives in your system. One disk will have the Operating System and all other software installed on it, and the second will be for audio projects and files. Partitioning a single drive to give you two ‘drive letters’ will not improve performance in any way. The size of these drives will depend on the volume of work you go through. A multitrack project can take up to 4 GB of space, so if you are recording projects of this size everyday, you will need a significant amount of space. It is recommended that you back up all your completed projects on DVD’s and remove them from your Hard Disk to keep them clean.

You will obviously need several other components in your system, DVD writer, good graphics card, but the above mentioned items are the critical ones, that you should spend the most on.

Quincy Jones leaves us another thriller

This is at a live performance that we put on, for Quincy Jones (2006). My business partner Amandla Bangeni to the right of Mr. Jones and I, Mervyn Sigamoney to the left are seen here with a few of our students. These are some of our top achievers that attend the Sound Engineering course that Amandla and I head up at Damelin Bramley situated north of Johannesburg.