Oktava MK012

Kelly Olsen said:
To suggest that you have been a member of this board since 2004 and have any interest in Oktava mikes or any mikes at all and claim to have not known about The Sound Room is really hard to believe.
Click to expand...
So I am lying? If you checked my articles out, you would see that the last microphone article I wrote was in 2002, I write about a lot more than audio. I own and have used the Sennheiser MKH-60, K6/ME64/66/67 and an Audio-Technica 4073a for several years now, I have had no reason to even know that the Oktava existed until I began researching for this article. I'm not a professional sound mixer, I am just a guy who uses mics as I shoot.

Kelly Olsen said:
You asked if it was your responsibility to go to all of the other sellers and find out what their story was. This is an extremely easy one to call. If you are going to write about them and make claims about them like you did about The Sound Room, then you bet your XLR you have a responsibility to check with them!

Basic journalism.
Click to expand...

You're not an attorney, are you?
You still have not cited the specific claims I made about specific dealers other than I said that I didn't know what the situation was with the Okatavas were that the The Audio Room was selling. What else did I say about any dealers?

I am beginning to wonder what your motives are in pursuing this? To prove that I am a bad journalist? Okay dude, you win. I actually don't claim to be one, no journalism school or degee, I write mainly for fun and as a hobby. I stated my case, Paul stated his, readers of this thread will see how it resolved. Readers now know that there are at least two legitimate sources in the U.S. to buy an Oktava. My point was that I don't normally deal with even a mention of dealers in my articles, never have. You were the one that attacked because I hadn't.

It's over Kelly. Time to move on with life, there are more important things to deal with. I have a date with my pillow. G'night, sleep tight!

Dan
 
Dan,
Looking back over your posts, the following should clear everything up for you so you can write your article. (I've also said basically the same in my earlier post):
you: "As far as listing all of the dealers, that was my point I was trying to get across to Kelly, I would normally not list any dealers, I just list the U.S. distributor and we are done. "
​
OktavaUSA is the U.S. distributor.
you: "I always figure that the readers can go to the distributors website and figure who they want to buy from themselves. But Kelly seemed to insist that I was doing The Sound Room a disservice if I did this and that Oktava USA was not THE official U.S. distributor, that they were merely A U.S. distributor. "
​
OktavaUSA is the U.S. Distributor. The Sound Room is not a "distributor". We simply also sell genuine Russian (made in the plant at Tula) Oktava microphones.

As I stated earlier, in your article kindly do Ken the honor by listing him. He sent you the mic, he is the US distributor. He should get credit as the US Distributor. But also know that we too sell the genuine article, in case your readers ever ask the question.

-Paul
 
puredrifting said:
Hi Phil:

I apologize for the delays, I have been shooting a lot. I can only work on the article when I have down time. Also, wrangling review copies of the last two mics, the Neumann KMR81i and the Sennheiser MKH-416 has been very time consuming. I received the Neumann on Monday so I am doing the tests on it today but Sennheiser has told me that they may not be able to provide an MKH-416 for quite a while. They have a certain amount of review copies that go out and until they are returned, I can't get one. I would ideally like to finish and publish the article by the end November.

I may just finish the article without the MKH-416, I did do the MKH-60 and MKH-50 but I know that I will receive ten e-mails a day asking why I didn't review the MKH-416. I could rent or borrow one but all of the other samples have been factory fresh. If the borrowed/rental mic doesn't perform well, that would be unfair to the manufacturer since we don't know how old or abused a rental or borrowed mic would be.

If you have any specific questions about certain mics, feel free to e-mail me directly blfilms@mac.com. The article is 26 pages so far and that's just basic review, it doesn't include these last two mics and any commentary. BTW, for sound samples, do you have any suggestions for compressed audio formats for the web that will retain enough sound quality to make quantitative judgements but are small enough for Ken's website to host and be practical? I would like to put them all up as basically uncompressed .AIFFs but with the amount of material 12 mics x 5 test each, each clip averages about :30, that would be close to 30 minutes of 48KHz, 16 bit .AIFFs. I think too much for Kens servers, especially if there is high web traffic.

MPEG 4? WAVs? Crunched .AIFFs? I am not enough of a web guru to know which codec will be the best for sound quality?

All the best,

Dan
Click to expand...


FLAC is the best compression scheme.

You get all the quality and about half the size.

Also, we can set up a torrent file of either the compressed samples or the full uncompressed AIFFs and just seed it.

Hope that helps.

~Estebe
 
wabbit said:
Paul,

You forgot to mention that Sound Room is also the only place (to my knowledge) that offers Oktavas and Rycote BBG. I still encourage you to look into being a dealer for K-tek. With the KSSM shockmount, a Ktek pole, and BBG you could put together a complete Oktava boom kit. A one stop shop for DVXusers looking to put together a budget kit (lord knows we got a million of them).

Cheers
Click to expand...


Oh... make that a million and 1 !

I am in the process of buying a matched pair from Paul myself. :laugh:
 
I will be buying an Oktava from soundroom no matter what Puredrifting has to say. Any DVXUSER discounts Paul?
 
I recall recently seeing the MK012 being sold with a low-cut filter instead of the -10db pad, and being marketed as a"videographers" version. Does anyone have info?
 
I too am about to purchase an Oktava and BBG from Sound-Room (I think the discount code for DVXuser's is 'DV'). I'm also buying, based on recommendations from this forum, the Gitzo GB3650 boom pole and the KSSM shockmount. Paul, since this package (with some variation on the boom pole) is recommended to most everyone who comes in here looking for a beginner's audio package, you could probably pick up these sales if you offered those products as well. I know that I'd buy them from you simply to keep things simple and save on shipping.
 
"DV" is the code.

Thanks for the advice on other products. I'll work to put together some audio packages for you guys. Would you believe the Gitzo USA distributor is about a mile from me? I could walk there in 15 minutes. I'll have to go see them next week.

re: the low-cut filter. it is new. Should have some of those soon available as an accessory.
If you have any other suggestions please feel free to contact me directly via our website, or sales <at> sound-room.com.
Thanks!
-Paul
 
Dan,

You asked what my motive here is and I'd be happy to state why I have engaged in this discussion with you. I have no interest in busting your chops or making it personal, but I will tell why I'm involved here.

No matter how you want to revise what you did and said the fact remains that you jumped in on this thread and heavily implied that a dealer who has been known for years to be reputable and honest and selling a genuine product, may not be what they or others claimed him to be.

You posed yourself as an expert in a way because you talked with ONE person at Oktava USA and declared the 5 stores that Oktava USA sells to as the ONLY Authorized place to get an Oktava and if we don't buy from them, or do buy from The Sound Room we may be buying a fake.

Even after others jumped in stating they they were certain that The Sound Room was selling genuine Oktavas you continued to raise serious doubts and openly questioned Paul's legitimacy. And you did so without ever checking with the owner of the company.

Even after the owner of The Sound Room gave a polite and full explanation of his relationship with the factory and that he was doing business with Oktava before Oktava USA even existed and that he has a better warranty you continued to raise doubts about his operation.

Even if it was not your intent you made yourself out as a quasi-expert as to who sold genuine Oktavas. You rasied doubts that were not based on fact. In doing so you could have caused people to stay away from the Sound Room just based on unfounded concerns.

I am a small business owner, my wife is a small business owner, and I know how close margins are and most importantly how much reputation means to a business owner. A person could spend years giving service and doing a great job and one person can come along and start spreading stories based on no research and ruin a company. The internet is searchable and DVX User threads show up on Google.

So imagine somebody is looking for an Oktava and they Google and they get this thread and see your comments which are based on half truths and not enough research and they stay away from The Sound Room. Or somebody new here reads your comments and it scares them away from Paul's business.

All it takes is inuendo to make somebody stay away from a dealer. You just have no right to step on somebody's reputation like you did and risk putting them out of business.

Am I a lawyer? No. But why in the hell does that matter? I'm just a guy who values fair play, responsible actions and keeping hard earned reputations in tact and not have them ruined by sloppy writting, sloppy research and cavalier attitudes about other people's livelyhood.
 
I just wanted to chime in here quickly and say that I ordered my Hyper cap from The Sound Room a few years ago and I couldn't be happier. I got a great product and great customer service at a great price. I'd definitely buy from them again.
 
This has been a very informative thread in clarifying the Sound Room's relationship to the "official" distribution channel. Unfortunately, Mr. Brockett's posts, based on the assumption that Oktava follows accepted American business practices, has resulted in some snarky criticism. Unfortunately, nobody's perfect - not Mr. Brockett, nor Paul/Sound Room - there is a post on the DVinfo forum from someone who had a very unsatisfactory experience with Sound Room. Since every story has two sides, I was disappointed that Sound Room didn't offer a response. That one unopposed post did more potential harm to Sound Room's credibility than anything Mr. Brockett has posted on this thread.
In the end, Mr. Brockett has my respect as an impartial reviewer/writer, and, if I do purchase the Oktava, I will certainly consider giving my business to Sound Room.
 
darkprints, your right. nobody's perfect. please point me to the post you mention. you can email or send a private message.

i was not made ever aware of any post, nor am I a member over there.

thanks,
Paul
 
oh wait... a quick search over there. i found a post by someone named "Dan Brockett" on September 20th 2007:

"If you want an Oktava, deal with the direct importer, www.oktavausa.com do not purchase from any other parties in the U.S. or you may get an inferior knock-off, defective unit, etc. "

The thread over there

darkprints, are you referring to comments by a "Dennis Kane"?

Dan, I hope we've cleared up any confusion with this thread here. I've emailed you as well. I have nothing against you, and I hope you do not have an agenda against me and my company. Please let me know if you need any more information/clarification.

All the best,
Paul
 
Last edited:
Paul:

As you probably can surmise from the date of that post, I wrote that before I had ever heard of The Sound Room, no agenda intended. If I were more of a journalist/reporter, I probably could have gone to your website and spoken to you about Dennis' complaint but I didn't, at that point, probably because of reading Dennis' experience and honestly, I have read negative reviews about the MK-012 before this, especially that it is susceptible to handling noise. I did read he name, "The Sound Room" in his post but I didn't even know who or where The Sound Room was, I figured it was some local dealer for him. If you read the Mike Peter Kane and Dennis Kane quotes, you can see that the two of them are complaining about the reliability and their Okatavas failing. I had just finished up testing the Oktava a few days before this so I offered my exprience with obtaining a reliable copy of the mic because the review copy that I obtained from Ken was reliable and sounded good. I don't spend a ton of time on audio boards and I have to say, I have only heard of your company from MattinSTL on here and and your name personally from Kelly here yesterday.

I have never seen ads for The Sound Room in EQ or other trade magazines and none of the sound guys I occasionally chat with at Coffey or LSC have ever mentioned The Sound Room, probably being as they are California-based. Those are the main LA vendors I buy gear from, as a matter of fact I bought some gear wireless mic mounts from LSC today. The only big audio vendors I have ever even dealt with or heard of back east are Trew, Full Compass and B&H.

Paul, seriously, to prove I have nothing against you, my next audio purchase will be from The Sound Room. Would I spend my hard earned money at a place I didn't trust? Do you sell Schoeps by any chance? Or maybe I will buy an MK-012 from you? Let me know

Dan
 
Thanks Dan, I appreciate it. I'll contact you in email. Yes, We sell Schoeps. I have to update our website.

I hope you understand why I would have to come to the defense of our small company. It's just me & my brother, that's it. We're not some big chain store, so at the end of the day the quality of the products we sell, and the quality of our service is all we have. When those two things are put into question, it has the potential to be quite damaging to not only myself & Ben, but to each of our families.

Regarding Mr. Kane, I've attempted to contact him directly. Hopefully it's something I can resolve with him.
 
I followed this passionated thread and I got very interested on learning more about the Octava mic. because I never have the opportunity of listening their sound. So I went to google and..... 15 pages of warning, comments and opinions about "not buying made in china octava" but very little about performance, user's experiences or audio clips.
I did learned one thing, the sound room it's great place to buy the real thing
 
Hi Paul:

I completely understand your position and respect it. As a freelancer, I am in the same position, I am hired almost completely from recommendations from colleagues and satisfied clients. The testimonials and passion from your satisfied customers makes it obvious that you are a person of integrity and that The Sound Room has a very good reputation.

Rafael, I too have read many of those posts and content and I think that is the reason that I approached the whole Oktava issue with my skepticism perhaps too sharpened. There are very few electronic products that you buy that have what seems to be an entire folklore behind them.

I will also be buying equipment from The Sound Room too.

That's the problem with choosing microphones, these days, they are all pretty good. Of the eleven models I have tested so far, I would be happy with and could find uses for any of them. The good news is, none of the mics I tested were 'bad' or subpar, they all sounded pretty good. It's definitely a buyers market for mics now, prices, for the most part are reasonable and the quality is very high overall.

If you can wait until the end of the month, you will be able to hear multiple audio samples of the Oktava as well as popular mics like the Sennheiser MKH-50 and 60, the Audio-Technica 875r and 4073a, Beyerdynamic 836, Schoeps CMC641 and CMIT5u, Sanken CS-1 and CS-3e and the Neumann KMR81i and you can judge for yourelf. The Oktava sounded very good I thought.

All the best,

Dan
 
puredrifting said:
Hi Paul:

I completely understand your position and respect it. As a freelancer, I am in the same position, I am hired almost completely from recommendations from colleagues and satisfied clients. The testimonials and passion from your satisfied customers makes it obvious that you are a person of integrity and that The Sound Room has a very good reputation.

Rafael, I too have read many of those posts and content and I think that is the reason that I approached the whole Oktava issue with my skepticism perhaps too sharpened. There are very few electronic products that you buy that have what seems to be an entire folklore behind them.

I will also be buying equipment from The Sound Room too.

That's the problem with choosing microphones, these days, they are all pretty good. Of the eleven models I have tested so far, I would be happy with and could find uses for any of them. The good news is, none of the mics I tested were 'bad' or subpar, they all sounded pretty good. It's definitely a buyers market for mics now, prices, for the most part are reasonable and the quality is very high overall.

If you can wait until the end of the month, you will be able to hear multiple audio samples of the Oktava as well as popular mics like the Sennheiser MKH-50 and 60, the Audio-Technica 875r and 4073a, Beyerdynamic 836, Schoeps CMC641 and CMIT5u, Sanken CS-1 and CS-3e and the Neumann KMR81i and you can judge for yourelf. The Oktava sounded very good I thought.

All the best,

Dan
Click to expand...
Thanks Dan
I would wait for your audio samples
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top