RIP www.microphone-data.com ?

[Mike Senior]

Just been checking some links on my own site, and it looks like microphone-data.com is down. Anyone have any info on this?

[Hugh Robjohns]

I was asked about this last week.

Rycote sold the IP and website to 'a record producer' just before the company was bought by the Vitec Group a few years ago.

I've no idea who that person is/was, but it looks like they've not renewed the domain hosting.

Keeping the database up to date is a serious undertaking. Perhaps the project was bigger than he imagined.... Or perhaps he couldn't monetise it sufficiently.

WayBack Machine has archived the library articles, but I don't think the mic database is accessible because you can't log in to it.

[James Perrett]

Wasn't there a CD version at some point? I think I have it somewhere.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Yes, there was a CDROM that came after the book, I think. The website obviously carried more up to date info, though.

[BariBoyB]

Wasn't there a CD version at some point? I think I have it somewhere.

do you happen to have the CD version? If so, is there any way you can email its contents to me? I’m a university student, and my professor used to use microphone-data for a really in-depth and important mic research project before it shut down.

[James Perrett]

Wasn't there a CD version at some point? I think I have it somewhere.

do you happen to have the CD version? If so, is there any way you can email its contents to me? I’m a university student, and my professor used to use microphone-data for a really in-depth and important mic research project before it shut down.

It isn't with most of my other music related CD-ROMs so I can't find it at the moment but I'll post if I do find it.

[Hugh Robjohns]

GOOD NEWS!!!!!!!

It's taken a while and some digging around, but I've just learned that the old (Rycote) Microphone Data resource website is not dead.

Instead, it's in the process of being rebranded as Micpedia, hosted by the Dutch company Odratek:

https://odratek.com/project/micpedia/

The mic database has been expanded to 4500 models, and a number of new features are planned to enhance the utility of the site.

https://micpedia.com/

It's not live yet, but will be soon — more news when I have it.

[Drew Stephenson]

[Mike Senior]

That is truly wonderful news! I'll have a gander on Monday and look forward to spreading the word!

[Luke Wood SOS News Editor]

Micpedia is now online! Many thanks to Hugh for passing on the information. Links below:

Announcement in SOS News

Micpedia website

[Mixedup]

Great that it's live and all is not lost. Sadly, I'm not finding it as good as I'd hoped.

First, the search facility is really picky. Eg search on 'Blue Dragonfly' and you'll get nothing, but search on 'Dragonfly' and up pops the Dragonfly with no manufacturer name, but with a 'Common Name' of 'Blue Dragonfly' listed below; or search on 'C451' (AKG's spelling, with no space) and you get nothing, but search on '451' and up pop options based on 'C 451'.

Worse, I've not found a working frequency response plot for anything yet. For example, when comparing U87ai and C414 B-ULS (no space between C and 4 this time!), I get plot backgrounds but nothing plotted on them. And for the SM57 and various others I get no plot at all.

I do hope these are just teething troubles — it has the potential to be a better resource than the old microphone data site, but at present I'm finding it less useful!

EDIT — might be worth others verifying what I've mentioned above, as I guess some of this eg the plots could be browser issues or some such. I'm on Chrome browser on MacOS 12.4.

[Hugh Robjohns]

I know they are currently working on the plots, in an effort to make them less data-hungry.

I suspect the other things are teething issues — it is a huge database to sort for consistency.

I haven't had a chance to peruse yet, so I dont know if there's a feedback facility. But I'll gladly pass your comments to the owner directly if you like.

[Mixedup]

I know they are currently working on the plots, in an effort to make them less data-hungry.

I suspect the other things are teething issues — it is a huge database to sort for consistency.

I haven't had a chance to peruse yet, so I don't know if there's a feedback facility. But I'll gladly pass your comments to the owner directly if you like.

Thanks. Yes, I don't want to sound ungrateful. It's an amazing thing they're doing and it's never going to be perfect from the off! I suppose my biggest feedback would be that the search engine could be more forgiving... A very slight data entry mistake like the space in C 451 and something becomes unfindable.

[shufflebeat]

I'd missed this - great stuff, thanks for the info, Dr H.

The Beyer m_201_tg is a very sensitive mic used primarily for speech/vocal.

Didn't know that.

I like the search facility, if I put a unique characteristic of a name, i.e., "v7" the suggestions seem to do the rest really well.

[Bob Bickerton]

Wonderful to have this up and running again.

Having trouble logging in or creating a new account - but I'm sure that's user error!

Bob

[Micpedia]

Hi everyone, I'm pleased that we finally got it online! We've expanded the database and we're working on many improvements. First of which will be a robust search tool that ignores spaces and searches including manufacturer name. At the moment the search is technically very rudimentary, and indeed you have to type everything exactly as it is in the database, which is very hit and miss. We'll fix it, hopefully soon, it's a priority. Also the "help" section doesn't link correctly yet. On mobile ironically it doesn't work at all.

If you have difficulties creating an account let me know what is going wrong. We have tested this internally without issues, but you are the first "outsiders" I speak to about the site, so it is likely that there are bugs still.

Plots are of course essential, and we have all the old ones from the original site, plus many new ones. We have a way of displaying these live rendered on digital plots, meaning you can compare one against the other in fine granular detail. And we have a way of extracting the curves from the original images. What we don't have yet is a way of doing all of this efficiently. Each one takes 20-30 minutes or so to process (sometimes longer with multipattern), when you multiply this by 4500 mics... We're looking to find a way to extract this info in bulk automatically, and in January/February we'll have an engineer working on this project. We'll also make some serious reflections on how the curves display, since it's something I don't want to have to do more than once. But curves are coming. I was tempted to wait until they were ready before publishing, but decided against it, as some data is better than none, and since this is sort of a side project for us I didn't want to risk that it got further delayed. Now that it's public, the pressure is on...

Also planned: community shootouts library (we're conducing some big ones next year, on classical instruments), a "related mics" tab, and price comparison tab (with affiliate links yes).

Anyway I beg you patience while we finish things and iron out the issues. This is a side project for us, but we're happy to be able to give the database more life, and it's great to know that people find it useful. Please keep the suggestions coming anyway, you can write to john@micpedia.com.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Thanks for sharing your plans with us, John.

[shufflebeat]

First of which will be a robust search tool that ignores spaces and searches including manufacturer name. At the moment the search is technically very rudimentary, and indeed you have to type everything exactly as it is in the database, which is very hit and miss. We'll fix it, hopefully soon, it's a priority.

As previously mentioned, I'm finding I can type a partial title in and get relevant suggestions straight away, which I find very useful. Please don't fix that.

Great work.

[Mixedup]

Anyway I beg you patience while we finish things and iron out the issues.

Absolutely! And great to hear the search will be upgraded. That will make a big difference.

Wonderful to hear you come back with all this info, in fact. The plot approach sounds like it will be great in the long run, and it's great to see just how much thought and energy is going into this!

[John Willett]

I don’t like that they have the price of the microphones. This will be different in each country and currency.

Much better to have price ranges say 5 different levels from cheap to expensive - this will give a good idea of price which the viewer can then look up at various stores in their own country.

It also means that the site owner is not continually having to update prices as they change.