Bernie,
I far prefer the MKH50/30 combo to a parabola for medium reach
requirements...I got some great monkeys and birds in lowland Bolivia with
that combo. And I just did some woodpecker ambiances in Louisiana with 50/30
for two NPR/National Geo stories on the ivorybilled woodpecker search.
(Shameless Plug: Tune in to Morning Edition next Monday and Tuesday morning!)
I love the MKH mikes in general, for their hot output level and smooth sound,
as well as for their environmental stability. (Though I did lose the services
of an MKH40 last fall when standing near an electric railway, apparently a
static discharge took out a component and I was left with permanent
crackle...)
Had I had access to an MKH20 omni I would have tried that with the parabola
too, though the built-in mount on the Sony dish might not open wide enough to
accept that mike. The clamp barely accommodated the B&K 4006.
But I was very pleasantly surprised at how well the parabolic 4006 omni mid
and MKH30 side signals integrated. And the reach of the omni in the parabola
for really distant sounds is more focused and prettier than any shotgun mike
I've ever heard. The dish also naturally rolls off the low frequency response
without the phase-shifting of electrical filters or the interference tube
side-effects of directional mikes.
When working normal coincident MS pairs like the 50/30, I agree it is
imperative to get the mike elements as close as possible to the same point in
space. When adding a fig8 behind a parabola, several things change to make
it different from normal MS:
-- The fig8 mike needs to be in the same plane as the omni (i.e., directly
behind the center of the dish), to avoid arrival time differences between the
two mikes from side-arriving sounds, and as far behind the dish's surface as
the omni is in front of it
-- The bidirectional nature of the fig8 mike tends to null out most of the
sound reflecting off the rear of the dish
-- The parabola itself blocks a lot of the sound behind the dish from
reaching the omni mid element.
The last two points combine to reduce the amount of noticeable sound problems
resulting from arrival time differences. The two mikes really have very
little information in common. That's why I expected the combination to sound
like three distinct sectors, left, mid, and right, with little
integration...but I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome.
Both the above rigs (parabolic dish and 50/30 in zeppelin) are fairly
noise-prone for handheld operation at very high amplification settings. I
use a monopod for supporting the rig when I'm moving a lot, and a small
tripod that snaps onto the bottom of the monopod for when I can stay still
long enough to go hands-free.
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