mclii

This whole TV non-stop viewing of hockey games wasn't all it was cracked up to be this weekend. I was really starting to get into it on Friday night, but then I started to realize something. This whole thing wasn't like any other year at this time. There wasn't hockey on TV all the time, at least on the channels I got. I thought perhaps they'd have no period intermissions in games, and cut to the other games that were playing in other conferences, but that wasn't the case. They still had the pointless intermissions, when really, it's not about the intermissions right now... it's about the games. It also wasn't the case that my channel got the Breakaway News Desk when it said it was going to. We only got it twice, when I think we should have gotten it three times. Oh well.

The interesting system I described earlier, didn't work out. UW firmly grasped a hold of a tie for 11th place out of 16 teams. There were no major upsets, and Mercyhurst and Quinnipiac being in the championship for their league helped UW in record of TUCs. There are only three teams on the bubble now. Ohio State, Colgate, and Dartmouth. I haven't been keeping up, so I don't know where any of them stand. I'll find out tomorrow at 10am on ESPN2 I guess.

High point of weekend: Hmmmmm... Goals that were disallowed were kind of well done (ie shouldn't have been disallowed), but I'll give it to UND and their consistant play in all three games.

Low point of weekend: UND's Robbie Bina getting fiercely boarded and breaking his neck in the game against DU. The referee was two feet away from it, looking right at it, and gave the DU player a two minute penalty. Sorry dude, that isn't a rule to interpret anymore, should have easily been a 5 minute major, and a game DQ, with having to sit out the next game too. Unfortunately, that ref has been having horrible luck in the past two weeks. He called the worst game I've ever seen officiated last weekend in the UAA vs UW game. Poor guy.

Prediction for NCAA winner: Michigan
I know this is too close to call, especially in hockey, but I thought I go out on a limb and do it. Michigan looked way better than any team this weekend, and it might be because of the competition they faced, but, they looked like a very good team.

Music: Recording Studio Dreams:

I'm slowly trying to acquire pieces, and always have been, for my "fantasy" studio that I'd like. Right now, I'm outfitting it with cheap, over-performing microphones, at least from my ear standpoint anyway. CLD is planning on painstakingly recording and mixing our songs again, so we're trying to move forward with that. That said, we don't really have some of the proper microphones to really sit down and rock a good mix of things. I went out today to find my dream kick drum microphone, the Audio Technica ATM25. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it anywhere. I did, though, find some drum packs of mics, that were available locally. A cool pack seemed to be the Audix Fusion4 pack, but it was a bit on the expensive side, and I've heard unimpressed reactions from multiple studio sources.

I decided to sprawl out my search to the internet, since there were no ATM25's locally. I did a little research, and yes, everyone loves these mics, however, I found people were talking up a set of microphones that rivaled the ATM25, and the Shure Beta52 (or AKG D112). And best of all both of these mics are $39. The microphone manufacturer is called Superlux, and the models I was looking at was the PRA-218A, and the PRA-218B. For a more diverse mic, I was looking at getting the 218A, but then after listening to some audio clips of it, I realized I needed something different for our current needs. The 218B would be perfect. Unfortunately, I can't find that dang microphone, anywhere on the internet. So I decided to do some more research. I looked, and looked, and then heard a recording of a cool combo of attack and low-end, definitely a large diameter microphone, the CAD KBM412. So I ordered me up one of those, some more XLR cables, and a bass drum mic stand, all for around $70. Saaaahhhwwweeeeet.

So currently, my mic collection is a spattering of cheap microphones, but very overachieving ones. I've got a stereo condenser mic that is very detailed, and very natural sounding; and it cost me $35 brand new. It's the Audio Technica ATR25 Add this new acquisition to the line-up, and it'll give me shivers thinking that I can have two quality mics for around $70.

With this in mind, here are my next cheap, overachieving, microphones I'm looking into:

Superlux PRA-218A
Studio Projects B1
Audio-Technica ATR97 (real cheap ($24), and probably very similar to Apple's plaintalk microphone without the crazy connector, for higher quality.) I'd use it for wonderful wall to wall pickup of room noise, and maybe even try some creative things like taping it to a drum shell to get weird rattles or something. I know WTF could use a couple of these, and they probably wouldn't need to even bother with clip-on mics. Of course, these boundary mics pick up everything, so maybe clip-on mics for the regular hosts, and one boundary mic for guests would be the way to go.

Awe, crud... I'm getting sleepy. Enough microphone talk already, eh?!?