deer2me22002 wrote:
> Hello again,
> Things are finally taking shape, I have built a homemade
> parabolic mic using a 21" Telinga Dish and a ECM T-145 mic. With this
> i am planning on using an MZ-R30 minidisc recorder which i purchased
> from E-bay. I wasn't to delighted when i received the MZ-R30, first
> problem I found was that the rechargable LIP-12(h) was dead as could
> be, then i found that the recorder would not charge the said battery,
> another option was to use regular AA battries, but i did not receive
> a battery case that would snap onto the sie of the recorder and none
> of this stuff could be purchased here in Canada. Therefore i had a
> recorder that was not portable. I have since gotten around this
> problem where as my son made me up some external power packs from 2
> AA battries , 2 wires were soldered to the 2 contacts on the side of
> the recorder where the battery case wuld go, and to wires were
> solderd to the batteries, bullet clips were joined in the middle of
> this for easy battery change. So now i have my recorder portable.
Even if you get no indication of charging in the display, try keeping
the LIP-12 on charge overnight. It might pick up, and it's a slow
charger, 14 - 16 hours for a full charge. The MZ-R30's charging
indicator never ran steady, and sometimes did not indicate at all. But
the batteries would still be charged. I have yet to have any of those
batteries go bad.
> Last night i built the homemade parabolic and tested outside, i came
> across a couple small problems. First i was getting what sounded like
> feed back, I was thinking that this was because of where my recorder
> was only about 2 feet from my dish, so I added a ten foot extension
> to move further from the dish. This has gotten rid of the feedback
> sound but now I am getting a different sound which is hard to
> explain, it is like hiss or low hum, i was calling it the sound of
> silence, I am not sure. I was recording in Mono/Manual Recording with
> my rec level nearly max, I was wondering if it has anything to do
> with my recording level, i read some where that between 5 and 6 was a
> good setting for this recorder. Could someone please tell me what
> would be a good level.
Here's what the level indicator bars mean in that recorder.
9 bars =3D 0 dB (over, and will clip, try to never have this bar show)
8 bars =3D -2 dB
7 bars =3D -4 dB
6 bars =3D -6 dB
5 bars =3D -12 dB
4 bars =3D -20 dB
3 bars =3D -30 dB
2 bars =3D -40 dB
1 bar =3D -51 dB
If the sounds you are recording are fairly even, or the loudest sounding
part occurs often enough to meter, set at about the -6 to -12 dB level
(5 or 6 bars) if you can without putting the gain too high. This will
give you a small headroom for louder sounds. If what you are recording
has a lot of fairly high bursts, or you are not sure, lower the level,
I've gotten good recordings with only 1-2 bars showing most of the time,
which gives a lot of headroom for the loud calls.
The mic will hiss at full gain. Some of it is the pre in the recorder,
some the mic. So you should not be setting that high if possible. Only
way around that is a lot more money for mics, separate preamp and so on.
You should be getting a fairly quiet mic sound if any at lower gain.
It's just something you will have to learn as far as how high you can
push it. Mostly try to keep the hiss from being too intrusive. You
should find you can pick up quite a bit. You may need to fiddle a bit
with the distance to the dish. Focus is inside the plane of the front of
the dish a inch or two.
If you are getting 60 cycle hum when outdoors away from buildings and
power lines, that's often a shielding or grounding problem. Make sure
your ground connections are good everywhere. Particularly make sure the
mic input jack is making proper contact, is all the way in.
If by feedback, you mean sound of the motor, I used to be fine with the
recorder held directly behind the parabolic, often holding it in the
same hand that was holding the parabolic.
Quickest windscreen of all would probably be to slip something like a
soft, worn T shirt over the whole thing. Or make the equivalent with a
circle of fairly fuzzy cloth and elastic in the edge to keep it from
flapping, so it covers the opening of the dish.
Walt
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