"Since I started using Active Mic Cable for my dynamic microphones, I can now feel deep low end that I wanted for long time. The sound image has truly expanded and making possible to create my dream sound."
Recording Engineer
Mitsunori Aizawa
We interviewed a heavy user of Active Mic Cable, Mr. Mitsunori Aizawa. He uses it in almost every cases where he records with dynamic microphones. Here are the impression of the cable and preferred combination of instruments and microphones.
"I record in wide variety of sounds from rock band to music for the plays. It's depended on the work but I always wanted to record in wide range and modern sound. Since I started using Active Mic Cable for dynamic microphones, I can record as I had imagined and ideal sound. For drums, I want to create strong low end when on recording and now I can now capture them that I always wanted by using this cable."
*For drums (dynamic microphone)
I like to pair bass drums with SENNHEISER e602 because it can capture both low end and attack so cut through the mix. But sometimes I feel the low end density is not enough due to the phase when hearing with whole drums so I boost the low end on EQ more than necessary. Now I can hear the low end that I want with the Active Mic Cable so no need to boost! I got impression that the sound image of bass drums has expand so big.
Active Mic Cable works very well on Morton Microphone Systems KickTone which I use as sub kick microphone. It can bring more push to low end and rich texture with adding to e602.
I use e602 and Active Mic Cable for toms too, it adds more fatness to V-shaped sound. The players who listen the playback will say "Toms are so fat!" for almost 100%.
Now I use this cable to almost every instrument that I record with dynamic microphones. I bought for drums, bass amps and guitar amps.
*For bass amps (dynamic microphone)
It brings more low end with pairing Active Mic Cable and dynamic microphones. The sound image on Y axis has expand so it can easily separate the bandwidth from bass kick drums.
Some microphones have more low end so they mask the high frequency and make it difficult to see presence. I'll try another microphones in those cases to find good balance. The pairing with Electro-Voice RE-20 will bring more presence compared to e602 so I decide depend on songs and genre.
*For guitar amps (ribbon microphone)
I use multiple microphones for guitar amps at the same time. One of them is ROYER Labs R-121 which is ribbon microphone. It has fat character already itself and Active Mic Cable makes even fatter and better. I hear slight drop in high frequency because of rich character in low end, but this can be compensated with EQ or by balancing the mix of multiple microphones. It has unique character that somewhere between condenser and dynamic microphone, so I'm sure that I can get deep sound making.
*For strings (ribbon microphone)
I use with Coles 4083. The higher frequency of this microphone has rolled off so leads to very fat sound, and Active Mic Cable had brought way more fat and bigger sound image. I feel the noise has reduced too. I don't feel comfortable to send phantom power to ribbon microphone (especially for Coles), but in fact there is no problem!
*Conclusion
The sound that can be recorded with single microphone will greatly expand with having this cable. You can expect another change by pairing with Active Mic Cable, that different from trying another microphone.
There are boost devices that lift up gain for 20-30dB but this cable is different from that. I prefer to add gain at microphone preamp, and this cable doesn't add gain so it can use with OLD Neve type preamp that have 20dB start.
It will expand the sound image so you can get very wide range and rich character sound.
