[Sticky] USB-C Microphone (official topic)

@avieatrix It's ready but the cost of parts from China (due to political problems) has made it quite costly.

3.5 is fully functional but as with any "beta" there are things I could have done better, there's also the question of if I should do a version without the CM108B (which is the "USB bridge" even though it's sold as an A/D).

@imp_inventor and I have been discussing to see what else would be useful and if you have any "requests" provided they're achievable, I'll include them.

I don't know the price estimate currently, but if it's beating an equivalent consumer product I still think that's a good deal. 

I saw you mentioned build instructions to go along with the BOM/files posted earlier on this page, but I wasn't able to find them when skimming through previous pages. Are those present and up to date? Because I might start adding parts up to see if I can order stuff soon if so. 

https://forum.diyperks.com/postid/6552/

This has everything you need - including some of my sweary remarks at myself 😉

@imp_inventor has been through the process more recently than I have so he's more aware of the "OUCH!" when you step on a rake - primariliy that you MUST use the right board stackup. Get that bit wrong and it's a virtual certainty that it won't work. Ever. And there aren't many recoverable parts, those that are are LSI and often very, very small indeed. That's a lot of dough and they (JLC's engineers, who are superb and very helpful) won't pick up.

I'm around most days if you need anything. I'm just neck deep in something that should have taken me about a week - is about, ooooo say, three months down at this stage.

Yeah, I can answer some questions if you have them but I'm still relatively new to this, so I don't know how much help I'll be. The furthest I've gotten on this project is the checkout (a point which I've reached about 4 times by now, each time with a slightly different tag), and the cost to build it and ship it to me would be nearly $200, if I remember correctly. It might have been $170.

This is what kills it right now for many of us and there's no way around it - even sending out the "gift" boards for beta test... NOOOOPE!

You do get two for that (and it's not that much more for a pack of five) but as a BETA it's complete but still could have some minor improvements - and the only way I know that is getting feedback...

The cost seems quite vastly different depending on what your local country charges in Duties and (in my case) a lot of that is collected at JLC. You CAN skip that but if you get busted on the way in it's anyone's guess what they will do. Likely hit you with a fine, but these days I'm not risking it.

Yup. The global economy is in such an awful state right now, but especially for us builders and creators. We can't practice our craft without materials, and we can't get materials because one single resistor or a capacitor costs as much as a month's rent. And it isn't even as if it's just bare parts that cost a lot, and the factories can get around it--I just bought myself a Framework 13 and the cost was well into 4 digit zone, so I'm really hoping it turns out to be worth it.
I would really love to build a high quality microphone for my little studio, especially a mic that I can customize, but it just costs so frickin' much.

*end rant*

Beautiful machine though the support is a bit "odd" and while parts are still "HOW MUCH?" you can, at least, get parts for them... like keyboards, trackpads and the like. 

There are other ways to make Matt's original head work though - not as fancy, I'll grant you, but there are other ways to do this and even the internal ADC (audio digitisers) are surprisingly good these days. More limited, naturally but the advantage of a self-build is you get to add to it as required.

Some of the capsule adaptors I did researching Songbird "Michelle" provide respectable performance with lower voltage JFET (*almost* anything works... sorta). 

On paper these simple circuits provide no noise immunity and fairly miserable distortion of several % which reads like utter misery on a datasheet but the mic capsule is fairly non-liinear and varies with frequency before we even turn on the amps.

I can go back and update one of those designs with a more suitable JFET (2sk209b for example) and that can easily be fed into the new Michelle since it's designed around that architecture. 

A stopgap to be sure, but a workable one.

Posted by: @marcdraco

↑

"HOW MUCH?"

Reminds me of a certain screen you replaced recently...

I'm not enough of an electrical engineer to know what to mess with to make it better, and whether I should, which is why I'm using someone else's design in the first place 🙂

Indeed - I'll tell everyone mate.

£300 (shipped). 

What you get. A 120Hz 4k LCD panel.

and ... that's it.

Bad thing: The Framework is a fortune if you need a part.

Good thing: You CAN get a part if you need one.

Good luck with yours mate, apart from my clumsy accident with a USB desk fan and the lack of aesthetics aside, it's actually the best machine I've ever owned from new or used and that's >20 laptops alone by this point. 

For people like us - if you can afford it [or *really* justify the expense] and if you can live with the "it looks a bit like it was designed by a group of boy scouts" the 16 is an absolute beast. 

Just don't game on it. I don't game on mine but I found out because I'm working on some software which uses a local AI as a research tool. I set the thing away trying to read the entire works of Willy Wobblestick (Shakespeare) which doesn't seem that hard right? I don't know the word count but it can't be that much.

So there I am, 15 minutes (yes fifteen, I didn't say it was fast) and I saw the battery going down at alarming rate. Desperately I checked everything and then eventually took the incredibly LAZY route of asking a couple of AIs which confirmed that my back of a beer mate in a Guinness-soaked haze [which to be seems to be my default when I need to spend a LOT of money]. But yeah... I botched it again (did that with the mic in the early days by not checking the loads, to my shame) and USB-C taps out below the total consumption of the machine running a local AI (or a AAA game).

Darn.

I need to have a word with that barman. 🤣 🤣 🤣  

I kind of wanted the 16 because of how much more powerful it is, but I would have had to pay another ~$3000 to get it. As I was already having a hard enough time justifying $1200 for a 13-inch moderately powered laptop, I couldn't manage it.

On the one hand, I'm hoping I'll never have to take advantage of the whole "parts-replaceable-modular" thing, because the parts are expensive. On the other hand, I justified buying this precisely because it's "parts-replaceable-modular" thing, and so I almost want to take advantage of that. I almost want my hinges to shatter, or for someone to accidentally laser-cut the top case, and for me to be able to whip out my wallet and go, "Ha! I'll just quickly purchase a new part and get back to what I was doing." Silly, but...still.

Not silly. It's something where we should be good for a while. The gotcha would be some one like Dell, HP, etc. find a way to buy Framework and then start stiffing us. I used to thing these things were sacred but ... not any more so I hope we have it a very long time or at least until there are enough around for 3rd party parts.

Not silly. It's something where we should be good for a while. The gotcha would be some one like Dell, HP, etc. find a way to buy Framework and then start stiffing us. I used to thing these things were sacred but ... not any more so I hope we have it a very long time or at least until there are enough around for 3rd party parts.

God, I really hope that doesn't happen. Framework had better stay just Framework.

By the way, I don't know if this is a bug or something, but have you noticed that a lot of your recent posts are duplicated? Like the server downloaded them and posted them twice?

There's a bug in the code that's supposed to stop it double-posting but I've usually got so many windows open that I'll often do that and not notice (per above, which I'll leave for context/proof!). I think the problem is that this server is struggling with the insert on new items. Hard to be sure as SQL isn't really my area. 

Gotcha, just making sure it was a known issue or wasn't solely on my end.

@marcdraco hi marcdraco, I want to know if I can buy pcba somewhere of studio quality USB mic the most cost effective one. Living in Pakistan.

I honestly don't know the market well enough to assist. Can you be more specific about what it is you need?

Sorry I've not been around lately, I'm not getting messages from the site for some reason?!

@marcdraco my need is simple. I want to have the pcba of diy perks mic or any other good quality pcba so that I can fit in my mic body to check how it works. 

Since I want to test in an actual mic body rather than creating custom one like Mathew perks did in his video.