Martyn Stewart wrote:
> For those wondering just what frequencies were recorded here's a
> sonogram of the first call:
> http://frogrecordist.home.mindspring.com/naturerecordists/Martyn.grouse.
> jpg
>
> Martyn, any idea what distance to the grouse?
>=20
> Yes mate, the Grouse was around 20ft, it was an overcast day with heavy
> rain in the morning but he was pinpointed with my headphones, I couldn't
> really hear it with the naked ear!! Its what you said later Walt, the
> proof is in the pudding!!! You can have all the bench tests in the
> world, but the actual recording is what counts in the end and the
> quality. This recording was unfiltered too.
The bottom line is if theory and actual experience disagree, theory
loses. Same with field vs bench tests. What counts is what happens in
the field in real recording. That's fairly fundamental to science, you
come up with a theory, you make predictions based on the theory, then
the theory lives or dies based on how well those predictions do. And
science is very picky, only a small amount of exception is necessary to
send you back hunting a new theory. I think we are at that stage in
parabolic mics, a new, more predictive theory is needed. The current one
has too much weight of exception against it.
I last got to hear Grouse in 1989. It was on the road to Hurricane Ridge
in Olympic National Park, and I saw him by his movement before I
realized I was hearing him. Similar distance of about 20' and you could
actually feel the sound as well as hear it. The road was full of
traffic, and he was next to a pullout on his favorite log, mostly
ignored by the tourists. We spent considerable time enjoying the sight
and sound. I did not have my current recording gear unfortunately, so
there are only a few slides. I'd love to try the SASS MKH-110 on these
guys, but they are not here in Georgia. I do have some tentative plans
to try that mic on Alligator bellows this year.
Part of the problem in hearing grouse is that most of the sound energy
is down in the infrasound level. And our ears are just not designed to
be very good down at these low frequencies. We don't really pick up a
lot of it. That may explain why it is that they seem nearly the same
loudness over a fair range of distance. I sometimes wonder what a grouse
hears, as they have the same fundamental ear design as we do.
> I haven't forgot Walt what you also requested with the Marantz recorder,
> I do have some closer and much quieter recordings for you, but I have
> been working around the clock and the Aussie is whipping me along too
> :-(
Don't worry about meeting any timetable, or even doing it unless you
want to. It just seemed like the next thing to try. I think we are going
to prove that good recordings are not much a function of recorder
nowadays. The differences will be elsewhere. Which is somewhat
comforting, for a long while it was looking like the solid state line
was going to go low sound quality. The jury is still out, but we may
have a few. I can manage to use any recorder that gives me good sound
quality, no matter how much else I may not like.
Walt
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