Roger C Boughton wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> It seems that the only mics that are recommended are either Seinheisser or
> Telinga !
>
> Surely there are other worthy mics about?
>
> What about DPA, Scheops, etc
If someone will give me some I'll be happy to try them.
Lang told me at one point he tried DPA in the SASS, but it's noise floor
was not a smooth hiss, but sputtered. Making it much more noticeable. My
only experience with that line is in the versions in quality sound
meters where you don't actually listen to the sound. From the meter
readings I got I don't think they sputtered. But, then sound meter mics
run at entirely different voltages.
Scheops has some interesting stuff, lot of money. Not much for distant
recording. Also unclear how weatherproof it is. Theirs seems much more
like a line intended for indoors and fairly close.
It's a very expensive game trying these high end mics. I'd love to try
them all, but I think I might need some food money as well. I have
considered renting some, but even that runs into money, and it really
takes using them for a while to find out what they are like.
The Telinga stereo is virtually a one of a kind, the reason for it's
position is obvious. Mono parabolics, there are probably a few other
good ones. But the commonly found ones tend to have too small a dish, or
use cheap, noisy mics.
There are other shotguns that can probably hold their own against the
less expensive Sennheiser line of shotguns, but the MKH line is getting
fairly unique. They got in that position catering to the movie folks
looking for boom mics. Since a movie set is pretty rough and tumble and
often outdoors it's not too surprising their mics work well for nature
recording too. The Sennheiser's we are depending on the collective
experience of lots of nature recordists.
We are really no better than anybody else, nature recordists are a herd
too...
Walt
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>From Tue Mar 8 18:22:17 2005
Message: 14
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 19:28:12 -0500
From: Walter Knapp <>
Subject: Re: Re: Sony PC with audio Minidisc and DVD-RW
richpeet wrote:
>
> OK, here is a couple examples to look at and listen to.
> This is not a hhb. This is a true consumer level Sony MZ R90 Minidisk
> with a $340.00 Sennheiser ME 62 placed inside of a priceless 32"
> polyC dish. No edits at all, no filters at all.
>
> First is a Warbler and you can see the harmonics do go above 20 khz.
> This was recorded at about 30'. You can also see from the noise line
> the compression did cut out very low volume background noise that
> you, as a person, had no chance of hearing but maybe your dog could.
You should note, before you believe those "harmonics" that go above 20
khz, that the math done to generate sonograms generates it's own false
"harmonics". These usually appear off the loudest sounds. Your stuff
above 20 khz is likely that. Though I can't be sure.
And the math involved is way above my head, so that's about as far as I
can go on that. Just don't have faith in everything you see in a
sonogram. It's tough when our very analysis tools flim flam us.
I have noticed the cutoff and this appears to be real. As I've noted,
this is in a range for which any sensitive work should move up to 96 khz
sampling rates. And it's cutting off sounds that are more than 50db
below the dominant sounds by my measurement with my sonogram software.
My bet is if you isolate what it cut off up there you will find it all
to be mic hiss and such like.
> Second is a Golden-crowned Kinglet recorded about 175' distant. About
> the highest pitched bird in a pure tone that I have recorded. You can
> see it was recorded at low volume and it is all there.
I wonder if anyone records anything above 10 khz? I'm not a bird
recordist, and my frogs top out at 8 khz. About the same level as the
Kinglet. Though they don't modulate the frequency as much as the kinglet
seems to be doing. Theirs are precise bursts of intense sound all at the
same frequency range. You can see that sono here:
http://wwknapp.home.mindspring.com/Sonograms/Little.Grass.Frog.Sono.jpg
Note that the sono is of a sound carefully worked over to give a clear
sono display to show the call. Primarily by doing sound intensity
filtering to drop the quieter stuff. I'm pretty sure the echo's at very
low frequency are another math problem.
Walt
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