Dannie Carsen wrote:
> Evert, you say "I think most people would have this setting
> to 'low' so that selfnoise of the micpreamp is much less then on the
> high setting. And I was told that MD recorders wihtout the switch are
> comparable with the switch set to 'high'."
>
> In my minidisc manual under mic sens Sony says "Usually, set it to
> HIGH. When recording loud sounds such as a live concert, st it to
> LOW."
>
> Now I'm curious, and since I'm getting a fair bit of self noise from
> the recorder too, and I'm going to try both settings. Anyone else
> have experience with the "LOW" setting?
Only if using a mic with a hot output in pretty loud situations would
you set it on low. The Telinga parabolic can benefit from this
occasionally, but not near as often for the mics under discussion.
Setting it to low decreases the mic noise, but has little effect on the
preamp noise. It also decreases the sound you want by the same amount.
So, now you crank the gain up to higher levels to get the sound you
want, which increases the preamp noise over what it would have been on
the high setting. Using the low setting will result in increasing the
noise levels relative to the the sound you want.
Only if you find that the gain setting you are having to use to prevent
clipping is down in the bottom third or so would you have need of the
low setting. You need to look into it there because you may be
overloading the preamp causing distortion. In several years using a
MZ-R30 which had the dual level switch, I used the low setting less than
5% of the time. Even with the Telinga it was not needed all that much.
When it was accidentally turned to low when not needed, it made the
recordings worse.
Sony is right, it's for recording loud sounds, like rock concerts. And
some internet groups are populated with mostly stealth concert
recordists. In those groups a big deal is made of the low gain setting
for good reason. For the same reasons, the most important mic
specification for them is the max SPL. Most nature recording is of
sounds that are much quieter. Though I have recorded frog chorus where
it was painfully loud to be out there.
As I noted from listening to the mp3's, I believe that a lot of what's
being blamed on the self noise may be environmental. Do the experiment
in a small quiet room, preferably with the mic muffled with a pillow or
such like. That will tell you the real self noise. The rest is
environmental. Which is a different problem.
Walt
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