Jim and I have been a supporter of the Cornell Lab for quite a while. Gues=
s
it just took us a long time to wake up. This year we did not send in a
donation and have not renewed our membership this year.
Being led down the garden path re cassettes is probably the main problem I
have with them but also what they try to pass off as science with bird
surveys. Piling one on top of another. The latest the horribly implemente=
d
Back Yard Bird Survey. It took public criticism on BIRDCHAT (after two
years of private communication) to get them to at least clean up part of it=
.
Prime example of pseudoscience in action (although some birdchatters said i=
t
gave pseudoscience a bad name)
With so many other critters who could benefit from a proper database of
volunteer sightings they insist on piling birdcount on top of bird count.
What about butterflies, dragonflies and frogs. Plenty of naturalists are
gathering information on them which would be useful if kept in a centralize=
d
database. Heck it would take only minimal programming changes to put
butterfly counts into their database.
The bottom line is that I look to a university for the best information
around and proper science. Cornell gets a failing grade on both. They hav=
e
publicists who are on Birdchat all the time advertising their products and
projects but apparently no real science behind them.
For the bucks we have sent their way I could have really top notch
equipment.
When help on recording information was asked for all I was told was to
attend their classes - impossible from my situation. They would not even
let me buy the notes (although I hear that somebody going out of NA was
allowed to do so and got great help from them) I remained too ignorant to
know that I should be checking pitch or even the proper associated data
which should be collected. Too bad because my oversights has depreciated
the value of what I have.
It would seem that if Cornell was really interested in bird recordings they
would have the most up to date information on their page to encourage other=
s
to participate. Guess they are just living off the accomplishments of earl=
y
recording people at the lab and want to discourage any competition from
others. What a shame
Barb Beck
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
-----Original Message-----
From: Walter Knapp
Sent: September 15, 2002 11:25 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [Nature Recordists] "Dissing" MiniDisc
Doug Von Gausig wrote:
>
> I received the following request today from a novice recordist - it's an
> illustration of how Cornell continues to stifle (in my mind) nature
> recording rather than stimulate it:
>
> >Last Oct. i spend all my time in the field on nature walks. Almost every
day
> >i would hear a strange vocolization, and than a whitetail deer would com=
e
> >waking out. I would like to get this recorded, but have never recorded
> >before, and the more i read the more i get confused.
> >I am thinking on getting a MArantz PMD-221 or 222 or a Mini Disk
recorder. I
> >would like to play it back and see how they react. The Macaulay Library
Of
> >Natural sounds and the Florida State Bioacoustics Archives say not to us=
e
> >Mini Disk recorders because of distortion. But on other nature sites
people
> >swear by them. Could you help me decide.
>
> The Florida reference is to Dave Mellinger's page at
> http://asa.aip.org/ani_bioac/ABminidisc.html , entitled "The Evils of
> MiniDisc". He says, in part "It's a shame to waste that effort with
> recording technology that definitely ruins the sound for science, probabl=
y
> harms it for playback, and possibly distorts it for plain old listening
> enjoyment." What BS.
Attacking minidisc is very alive and very well. That article recommends
cassette and reel to reel recorders, any cassette or reel to reel, over
MD. And they have the gall to talk about MD distortion! I gave a link in
the discussion on homemade parabolics last night, looking around some
more on that site will give you this page on simplified testing of a
tape recorder:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com:80/homepages/G_Kunkel/Docalib.htm
What he gets is no surprise, I used cassette for many years before going MD=
.
I've made a personal policy of coming right back at any such post I see
with the facts. Many people like the novice above nowadays search the
old posts to find out about things. We need to make sure that our
corrections are right in there with the negative stuff. It's a very
thankless job. When people get pissed off by the arguing, they almost
always attack the person defending MD, or defending Sony.
Now that they have quit making DAT mechanisms, it may let up slightly.
At least pages like the one above will be shown for how out of touch
they are. Though I doubt it. Most all who diss Minidisc have never used
one. They have never looked into the readily available discussions of
how they actually work. To have done either they would know that the
arguments raised are not supported by the actual recordings. They simply
pass on folklore or their personal bent.
As for Cornell, what they do is criminal. They still have up the thing
on tropical bird recording where they tried to palm off digital clipping
as the effect of ATRAC. For a group that claims to be scientific, that's
unforgivable, false data:
http://birds.cornell.edu/LNS/recordingnature/html/recordingnature_techequip=
2
.html
Are they so stupid they don't know this is the fingerprint of digital
clipping? For a non technical person this would be understandable, but
for a couple sound engineers, it's not. Curiosity alone should have
revealed the truth and that graphic should have never been posted in the
manner it was. As a lesson about digital clipping it's just fine.
In case you are wondering about what the correct illustration looks
like, here it is:
http://frog_recordist.home.mindspring.com/naturerecordists/MD_6.5_7.5.jpg
The first half of the sonogram display is the input signal, as identical
to what they used as I could make it, the second half is after it was
digitally sent to my Portadisc, then digitally brought back into the
computer from the ATRAC 4.5 recording on disc. Somewhere in the process
I lost about 1dB in level, thus the color change. I did not track down
where, but it's unlikely it was ATRAC.
Now, what happens when you up the input to the Portadisc until it goes
into digital clipping (this was about the equivalent of a +4 meter reading)=
:
http://frog_recordist.home.mindspring.com/naturerecordists/Clip_6.5_7.5.jpg
Note that slight variations in how far you are overdriving change the
details of the pattern, but not it's general form.
For those that don't understand why it's bars, this is due to the
sampling rate. In digital clipping the minimum time interval you can
change is equivalent to one sample, or in the case of MD,
1/44,100th of a second. When the damaged sample set is fed through the
D/A converter or analyzed for frequency using fft's, this results in
only certain new frequencies being added for each original. The fact
that two more or less pure tones were used makes it show up well. In a
natural sound far more frequencies are involved initially so the nature
of the damage is masked. And it does not matter what digital recorder
you clip, the result is the same. You can get the same sort of pattern
overdriving a DAT, or one of the new solid state recorders. Or what
sampling rate. It's basic to digital sampling.
I could kick myself, for years I believed that ATRAC 2 was as bad as the
Cornell bunch were saying and that it was nice that current ATRAC did
not mess up like that. Then one day I decided to see just what my
Portadisc would do with their signal. It was only in that I made a error
in input levels at first that brought out the truth. Those folks at The
Macaulay Library Of Natural Sounds have been and still are lying about
minidisc. I'm now betting that a early MD will do just about the same as
my Portadisc with their signal.
Nearly all dissing of MiniDisc eventually quotes that Cornell article,
it's the invalid base upon which it's all built. It's long past time
they not only removed it but prominently displayed a correction and
apology. Actually even better, put that right in the article. And for
me, I'll not trust what they say unless I can reproduce it, they went
way, way down in their already low standing with me. I used to be just
unhappy they did not keep up to date.
I read that article in 1997, but I also did some test recording and it
was clear they were not talking about the MD I was testing. So,
realizing I might be wasting my money, and mad that a uncompressed mode
was not available, I bought my first MD. It took very little time to
realize I'd made a good choice and the compression issue was a red
herring. I'm now on my third machine, having worn out two walkman MD's I
managed to come up with the money for a HHb Portadisc. I have no qualms
about it's ability to stack up to DAT machines, or be worthy of
recording from the Sennheiser MKH mics I've been impoverishing myself to
get. It, quite simply is not my sound quality limiter. (I am most of the
time)
Ok, I've ranted enough for now. Unlike what some think, I'm not locked
into MD. I just think it's the best choice for field recording today,
particularly for folks like the novice who started all this just trying
to find a quality recorder.
Walt
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