In June of 2018, I uploaded a video comparing the legendary Shure SM58 vocal microphone to its much more modern cousin, the Beta58a. When the Beta series launched in 1989, Shure knew better than to discontinue their iconic vocal microphone, and both remain in production today. With a supercardioid polar pattern, hardened steel grille and updated colour scheme, the Beta58a has several significant upgrades over the SM58, but is also some 60% more expensive, no doubt a significant factor that has prevented it from repeating the worldwide success of its stablemate.
For some reason the microphone was never included in the microphone section of my Amazon store, something has I have now rectified. You can also purchase the microphone directly on Amazon here. As always, thanks for your support!
The Amazon links section has been expanded to include a ‘connectors‘ page to list the various pro audio connectors that I recommend. To start off I have added the Neutrik SpeakON connector, covered in my video “How to wire Neutrik Speakon connectors”. These are, in my opinion, the only loudspeaker connectors that should be used for Pro Audio.
You may have noticed that this website has been intermittent over the past few days, or that you are getting a ‘Connection Reset’ error when you try to access different pages. Please rest assured that I am aware of this problem and am working with my hosting company to sort it out.
Some good news in the meantime – I have finally got some time to work on the channel, so hopefully new content should be coming your way in the next few weeks, God willing.
Happy New Year everyone! Had an interesting question come in from a viewer recently on one of the DI box videos and thought I’d post my response here as well:
G.M.: Hello Bruno. One question that has been on my mind lately is the difference between comparable units in Radial’s DI lineup between their Pro XX and their JXX (e.g. Pro DI vs. JDI) DIs. I believe the main difference is in the transformers with the Pro series containing Eclipse transformers and the J series including the Jensen transformers. First, would you say that is accurate? Second, are there really any other meaningful differences? and third, what really is the difference in those two transformers? I am not sure if this is something you could cover in a comment response or in another video; but, I really value your experience and opinion on these topics!! Thanks for all the great content on your channel.
GLB Productions: Hello GM, thanks for getting in touch. The first thing to understand is that there is a difference between the active and passive DIs in Radial’s lineup: for example, the J48 and Pro48 have exactly the same circuit and sound identical – the differences between them are in the feature set and also more mundane things like the size of the case and the number of colours in the graphic package. In the case of the passive DIs, you rightly point out that the difference is in the quality of the transformers used. Radial give details about the differences on their FAQ pages e.g. here and here. Basically, the Jensen transformers are the ‘ultimate’ choice for studio use, whereas the Eclipse work fine for live use. I have found this to be true – in live sound, the frequency response of your loudspeakers is the limiting factor rather than the transformers in your DIs.
For live sound, I use the J- and Pro-series DIs interchangeably, and choose more based on the feature set needed. For example the JDI has a merge to mono feature and can also accept a speaker-level input, the ProAV series are specialist DIs with 3.5mm and RCA inputs that can solve a myriad of problems. Hope that helps!
The video that inspired the question:
Hope everyone is doing well – take care and keep sounding good!
Over the past month or so I’ve upgraded some of my more popular videos by adding chapter marks to the description so that they show up when you mouse over the timeline. This makes the videos much easier to navigate and also saves time when you want to jump to a particular section.
Quickly scan through the contents of a video.
A couple of the more popular ones that have been given this treatment are my Shure SM58 vs Beta58A and Taka-Mini vs. GS Mini videos. Hopefully this enhances the channel experience for everyone.
The pandemic has been keeping me very busy with video production work – I hope to be able to resume making YouTube videos towards the end of this year or early in 2021. Until then, I continue to respond to all comments on all videos, no matter how old they are. Stay safe everyone!
The Amazon links (DI Boxes) page has been updated to include the Whirlwind pcDI. This is long overdue considering that it was featured in a video posted way back in 2012! It still looks very much like the original, but with minor updates to add 1/4″ connectors and remove the RCA thru connectors. This is a still a great value for money tool that will get the job done, noise-free, night after night.
Prompted by a viewer who asked me about the differences between the Yamaha MG10XUF and the Mackie ProFX8v2. These mixers look very similar but that belies a whole host of important differences.
In this video I compare the following attributes of these mixers:
02:18 Price 03:09 Release date 04:29 Number of input channels 07:50 Input channel configuration 12:05 EQ section 12:51 Number of aux sends 15:29 ON vs. MUTE switches 16:57 Pre-Fade Listen (PFL) function 18:34 Onboard graphic EQ (Mackie only) 19:18 Onboard effects (FX) processor 20:40 USB Audio Interface 23:27 Studio Monitor Output (Yamaha Only) 25:29 Internal vs. External power supply 27:26 Aesthetics and Ergonomics
This purpose of this video is not to give a comprehensive overview/review of either of these mixers, but rather to educate end users about how to systematically analyse the differences between two apparently similar pieces of equipment. The aim of this being to avoid any nasty surprises after purchase!
The second part of this series is now available on YouTube! Thank you for your great response to part one, with over six thousand views in less than a week!
