I have finished preliminary tests on the Telinga EM-23 vs the Sennheiser
ME-62, and the results are below. The tests were conducted as follows:
The two mics were placed next to each other (wind screens touching) just
outside my office wall. Their leads were plugged into a Telinga "Y" cable
that sends the input from one side to the right channel and the other to
the left. This "Y" cable was then plugged into the "mic" input on a Sony
MZ-R55 MiniDisc which was in "record-pause". The "line out" from the
MiniDisc was sent to the "line in" on my Yamaha DG-1 digital sound card and
the results recorded direct to the hard drive using CoolEdit 2000 as the
controlling, editing and analysis software. I recorded representative
sounds for three days, so that I'd get all kinds of different sounds with
different backgrounds, and I was careful to balance the signal of the two
mics as closely as possible, using steady-state broad-band noise when it
was available in the environment.
I have posted the "raw" results in .wav and MP-3 forms - the wav file is
large at 6.5 Mb, but represents the "true" results. The MP-3 at 882K is
certainly good enough to give casual listening impressions of the two. The
.wav is at http://www.naturesongs.com/recordists/em23vsem62.wav and the MP3
is at http://www.naturesongs.com/recordists/em23vsem62.mp3 .
I have also supplied "screen shots" of the CoolEdit analysis of various
segments of the test, and they are at
http://www.naturesongs.com/recordists/em23vsem62-1.jpg,
http://www.naturesongs.com/recordists/em23vsem62-2.jpg,
http://www.naturesongs.com/recordists/em23vsem62-3.jpg, and
http://www.naturesongs.com/recordists/em23vsem62-4.jpg. These charts are
fairly self-explanatory - you can see which area is being analyzed by the
area on the image that is selected. The first is one element of a Gila
Woodpecker's call, the second is one note of a Mourning Dove's call, the
third is a distant Indigo Bunting's song, and the fourth is a "squeal" of a
Brown-headed cowbird that was quite close to the mics. In the analysis
charts, the blue line is the left (EM-23) channel and the pink is the right
(ME-62) channel. On the CoolEdit editing screen and the wav and mp3 files
the top channel is the left (EM-23) and the bottom is the right (ME-62).
You can dissect these any way you like, and I hope you do. My immediate
conclusion is that these two mics are very, very similar - in frequency
response and it noise. Certain sounds, like the cowbird, show some
differences, but the differences are very, very slight, and I'd have to
conclude that the two mics are about equal in overall performance. The
EM-23 is a "plug-in-power" mic and so far has been very rugged, so it's the
one I would choose for most regular recording duties, especially if
batteries were any consideration (the EM-23 is powered by the K-6 powering
module and a AA battery).
What more should I have done here to get an accurate and representative
test of these two fine mics?
Doug
Doug Von Gausig
Clarkdale, Arizona, USA
Moderator
Nature Recordists e-mail group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/naturerecordists
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