DC Audiovisuel - SOUNDFIELD STS200 + ZEPHYX Windscreen

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Condenser single body Format-A surround microphone with complete CINELA ZEPHYX windscreen

In a few words

The A-Format Soundfield SPS200 is designed for stereo and surround recording. It is much cheaper than its elder SoundField ST350 and specially designed for outdoor recording: it is rather light (7.75 oz.), Phantom 48V powered, and incorporates four condenser capsules, provided by MBHO GmbH, a german company created by former Schoeps engineers. Thus sound colour of the SPS200 is, of course, close to Schoeps capsule sound colour.

Mounted inside its Rycote windscreen, the SPS200 has a major drawback because of its extreme sensibility to handling noise as to low frequencies. It requires an efficient suspension. So neither can it be used on a boom with this windscreen. In order to fit it into a Cinela ZEPHYX windscreen, the microphone was shortened by approximately 3/4", a special version validated by the SoundField engineers. The SPS200 can at last be used on a boom, and so, used for feature shoots.

The Ambisonics multichannel technology relies on a sound localization theory. It is able to reproduce a full sound field by decomposing the complete directional characteristics of this sound field into harmonics components of a sphere, called W (pressure, omnidirectional), X (front/rear), Y (left/right) and Z (up/down), which are the B-Format.

Opposite to others SoundField mikes, the SPS200 outputs A-Format signal, the one directly produced by the four capsules. With this new system, each capsule is therefore directly recorded, allowing to choose preamps and A/D converters.

In order to create stereo or surround signal, after A-Format acquisition, this one must be encoded on a computer thanks to a dedicated plugin provided by the manufacturer (unfortunately protected by iLock dongle). For that, a new version of traditional Surround Zone, the SPS200 Surround Zone software, designed for Pro Tools HD or any VST capable DAW (we can here mention the excellent Reaper from Cockos), directly can encode information at any desired surround format, cardioid 5.1 by default, also bidirectionnal 5.1, hypercardioid 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 8 or simply stereo, with the different known parameters (rotation, tilt, zoom, rear pattern, front and rear width).

This product is commonly named: Soundfields STS200, Soundfields STS-200, Soundfields STS 200, Soundfields ST-S200, Soundfields ST S200, STS200, STS-200, STS 200, ST-S200, ST S200

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