Machinations With Marinick, Measurement Mics And Magnificent Magnetics 26Dec19

Michael Marinick was in Breck to visit his ski instructor daughter Gabrielle for Christmas and we took some time together to set some records straight and formulate machinations for the future of America... and drink some beer. Of course I introduced Mike to ORB whether it was out of the can on our deck or on the patio of the spot itself. Very good times with an old friend.

The dynamic range of my originally purchased USB acoustic measurement mic, the Dayton Audio OmniMic, was insufficient for my needs and not suited to task. I had to exceed my THX reference levels a lot to make valid measurements and that required me to use earplugs and duck and cover during tests. I cross-graded to the miniDSP Umik-1 which is kind of the standard and works perfectly. I accessed my serialized factory calibration curve and imported that to REW for corrected measurements. Much better.

The Russians got the ViaWave SRT-7 ribbon super-tweeters to me via FedEx. Wow, they weight 3.5# each. I must say FedEx failed on several occasions to know when they'd deliver and missed by several days ultimately. Not good for them and I've heard of their weak 66% on time delivery record this holiday season from news coverage. Anyway, I wasted no time in fashioning a sophisticated package (not) for them and went right to listening. They are sealed in their own enclosure so nothing more was needed to really make them sing. They are awesome but I am glad I have an attenuator as else they'd take over the high end - somewhat as expected/planned. The next steps are to package it all up into a cleaner add-on for the Blodgett Theater sound system. I have all the parts now but need to cut, assemble and integrate my final DIY SuperTweeter add on.