jonnykontroletti wrote:
> Hello Walt!
> Again, I would like to thank you for your valuable advice.
> Unfortunately I did not win the Portadisc auction (I was $20 off).
> However, I was able to find a "B-Stock" unit for $950. "B-Stock"
> apparently stands for not used but surface scratches on the unit,
> which is worth a $400 saving to me.
I was wondering how you did.
Note GP have just released a even higher capacity AA NIMH battery. Rated
1900 mAh, even though they call them 2000's. I needed some more AA's to
replace older Nicads that died, so ordered a couple sets to run my
Portadisc. They will replace the 1800 mAh I'm currently using and those
will be used for other less demanding uses. With my night recording I
have a fair number of battery eaters, most of which run off AA's. Your
Portadisc will probably arrive with 8 1500 - 1600 mAh, and you will
probably want to get 8 more to fill the 2nd battery holder. I bought
from here:
http://4gdo.com/products.htm
Though there probably are other places to get the higher cap batteries.
Even ebay.
Treat the battery holders carefully, they tend to crack near the center
join, both of mine have a crack there, but still work fine. The built in
battery charger in the Portadisc is not a fast charger, so if you are
going through batteries fast you will probably want to get fast chargers
to do the batteries externally.
> It seems as if I will be ready to explore new recording territories
> soon. Until I learn more about mics and stereo- and nature recording
> techniques, I will go with a pair of Sennheiser ME80 microphones
> which I can use for free. Would you say these are good enough to
> produce acceptable results recording mostly ambient nature sounds?
ME80's are part of the K3 series of mics. Their sensitivity is not as
great as the current K6 series, but they should be good mics to get
started on. They are a short shotgun mic, give a pretty good
directionality, though not as good as the long shotguns. I expect you
will have to use them with the gain well up on the Portadisc. You can
use them paired for stereo. For that you will need to find the diaphragm
location, probably near the back of the side grill. Mount them with the
diaphragm's even and close together, and angle them apart. Try, maybe 50
- 60 degrees for a start. Listen for a dip in pickup in center of the
stereo field as a indicator your are aiming them too wide a angle.
Hopefully they come with some wind protection, shotguns are sensitive to
wind, even gentle breezes.
Get out and find out what they can do, free is the best price of all.
You will learn a lot and be able to spend your money better.
> Do you happen to have some of your recordings available via the
> internet?
There are a few associated with testing the SASS and the homemade
parabolic design I put up:
http://frogrecordist.home.mindspring.com/docs/quickparabolic.html
http://frogrecordist.home.mindspring.com/docs/sass_mkh110.html
These are pretty much test recordings of what little I can find to
record this time of year. The SASS ones are done with the Portadisc.
(the thunder one is from before I got the mics working right)
There are also frogcall clips on my frog pages. They are very old stuff
now, and not all are mine. In the next month or so I expect to be
replacing most of them with filtered calls I'm doing for the Georgia CD:
http://wwknapp.home.mindspring.com/GAFrog.Toad.html
Most of my recording the last few years has been for documenting a
scientific survey of frogs. I'm in a transition period now as the survey
has officially ended. I'll continue with survey on my own. But am
gearing up to do recordings for listening and so on. Anyway spend more
time at good sites, hopefully less time at bad sites.
I'm currently in the process of sifting 800+ site recordings to produce
clips for a Georgia Frogs & Toads CD planned to be released as a fund
raiser for non-game research at their "Weekend for Wildlife" annual do.
That will be in early February next year. It will be available for sale
through them after that. All but a few of the recordings on that will
come from the stuff I've gathered. Not easy as scientific recordings for
documentation are recorded in a different way to listening recordings.
It's critical to get all species at all sites, no matter what that does
to sound quality. Or where the site is.
Walt
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
|