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Re: Re: Portadisc / Microphones /Walt

Subject: Re: Re: Portadisc / Microphones /Walt
From: Klas Strandberg <>
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 15:37:42 +0100
Up north, in Lapland, the Swedish Army made mosquito repellent tests a few
years ago. Among a few other ways, they found the by far most efficient to
be large quantities of yeast-pills.

DO NOT!!! use any mosquito spray on the Telinga dish! The strong detergents
make it milky and weak.

Klas.

At 02:44 2002-11-05 -0500, you wrote:
>jonnykontroletti wrote:
>> Hello Walt!
>> I bought two sets of 1800 mAh batteries made by Lenmar.  I hope these
>> will work well.  They were available on Ebay for $11 per set.
>
>That's the capacity I've been using in mine for the last year. Should do
>fine.
>
>> You mentioned that you do much of your recording at nighttime and I
>> imagine in mosquito-friendly territory.  I wondered what you do to
>> keep from being eaten alive?  I spent one night looking for
>> alligators in a Louisiana swamp and must say that I underestimated
>> the mosquito problem.
>
>I dislike the biting flies more.
>
>I use a citronella based insect "repellent". Citronella does not
>actually repel, they just seem to have trouble finding you. I use it
>instead of any of the DEET based ones as Deet ones will dissolve almost
>anything, including expensive equipment.
>
>Since my usual uniform is shorts, T-shirt and field vest I have lots of
>skin exposed. I have a couple pair of light overpants I can pull on if
>they get too bad.
>
>Remember, you can't dance around, swat things, call out or any of those
>things as they get into the recording. Nothing quite like getting
>everything going nice with the frogs calling just right and somebody
>decides to drill you. There is a certain amount of zen in not reacting
>until you get the recording....
>
>Georgia has a good supply of insects. Beyond biting you, if you turn on
>a light at night all kinds gather. You get a lot of insect hits on a
>parabolic mic here. I was very happy when I moved from the Sony MZ-R30
>where to see what was going on I had to turn on my headlamp. The
>Portadisc has it's own illumination which you can switch on, and it's
>bug light yellow, does not seem to attract insects.
>
>> You wrote:
>>
>>>>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.<<
>>
>> I could not agree more.  I always was weary about using expensive
>> gear as a battery charger in the first place.
>
>Since I'm mostly recording fairly short recordings I generally won't go
>through a charge in a evening, often not in several evenings. I normally
>do use the internal charger just because it's easier than getting the
>batteries out and putting them in another charger. And my other chargers
>are probably busy charging the headlamp and flash batteries. The front
>of my truck is often a galaxy of little led lights from all the
>chargers. I'm equipped to stay out indefinitely as far as battery
>charging and such like as long as I'm not hiking.
>
>> You wrote:
>>
>>>>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.<<
>>
>> I am not sure I I understood.  Does this mean that the microphone
>> pickup is stronger towards a specific area?
>
>Shotgun mics pick up strongest from directly down their length in front.
>They are designed to attenuate the side noise. If using two mics for
>stereo you want the sound to arrive at the two mics at the same time to
>keep it in phase. The arrival point is the diaphragms, which is why you
>try to keep them as close to each other as possible. Then to pick up a
>stereo field from as wide as possible you angle the two mic tubes
>relative to each other to widen their collective view of the sound. You
>can only do this until the side attenuation begins to put a hole in the
>center of your stereo field.
>
>Microphones come in all kinds of pickup patterns. The one that picks up
>from all directions is called a omni microphone. Next up is the Cardioid
>microphone, who's pickup pattern is from most of the front half.  Then
>you can narrow that to a supercardioid, which is more directional, but
>also picks up a little from directly behind it. Beyond that is the realm
>of the shotgun mics where the pattern narrows even more toward the
>front. You can check out the pattern of a mic by looking in it's specs
>at the polar diagram, which is a graph representing this pattern.
>Sennheiser has a nice set of diagrammatic illustrations of the patterns
>for the MKH mics here:
>http://buy.sennheiserusa.com/ASP/Sennheiser/pdf/rfcm.pdf
>
>
>> Good luck with this project and let me know when you have the CD
>> available.  I sure would like to purchase one.
>
>Lang Elliott has a CD on frogcalls you can get right now that covers
>more area. "The Calls of the Frogs & Toads" covers the eastern US.
>http://www.naturesound.com/guides/pages/frogs.html
>
>As I noted this will be sold to benefit the state non-game section. I'm
>not sure the arrangements, but they will be the ones to order from. I
>will put up a notice.
>
>> I wondered whether you happen to know the Sennheiser MKH 416 U48
>> mic?  If you do, how would you say it compares to the Sennheiser
>> ME66?  I might be able to get a good deal on either one and am just
>> not sure how to decide.
>> With best regards
>> Jonny
>
>This is a short shotgun mic that's of much the same design as the long
>shotgun MKH-816's I have. It's a very good mic, though the newer MKH-60
>is probably even better. It can, however, be found for less cost than
>the MKH-60. It's one of the standard boom mics for the movie industry
>and is still being produced by Sennheiser as a result. There are large
>numbers of this mic around.
>
>It's polar pattern is much like the ME66, but it has a much flatter
>frequency response curve for a more even pickup across the frequency
>spectrum. And the MKH-60 is even better in this regard.
>
>I would probably rate the order of quality as the ME66 lowest, then the
>MKH-416, then the MKH-60's as the top short shotgun from Sennheiser. I
>have the MKH-60's and they are wonderful mics.
>
>Note with all three of these their directionality is much sharper at
>higher frequencies their pattern narrows as you go up. The ME66 and the
>MKH416 have a lot of erratic things in this in their off axis pickup.
>The MKH-60 has a much smoother pattern.
>
>On long shotguns it's a little closer between the MKH-816's and the
>MKH-70. The MKH-70, by it's specs should be better, but the 816's seem
>to be more popular. I've not tried a MKH-70, but have listened to some
>recordings. I tend to like the 816 better, but cannot pin down a reason.
>I believe the 816 is a bit narrower in it's pickup pattern, it is
>considerably longer physically. Again the ME equivalent, the ME67, is
>not as good at it's frequency distribution.
>
>Note we are talking about the top little bit of sound quality in drawing
>distinctions, every one of these mics are very good.
>
>Walt
>
>
>
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>
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