Thanks Lang, I think it brings me closer to an understanding.
But I wonder if we are talking about at least 3 different things here?
1/ Take two very good microphones. High Quality Professional. In daily use,
they sound very similar, even when you record demanding music, even piano
transients. But if you take a key-ring with many keys and chink them close
to the membrane, one of the mic's might sound fine, the other "scratchy" -
"shrill"??
90% (??) of all HQ mics will sound "scratchy" (shrill??) in that way. (more
or less) Also a Telinga mic, I'm afraid. I think it is quite common that
you get "key-like" sounds in focus of a parabol, lots of different HF peaks
in lots of different combinations, all of them within a very short time.
Sometimes I have described it even like "when you scratch with a metal fork
towards a porselin plate". It's just a total mess of random peaks.
This effect will always occur when you aim with a parabol exactly at a Grey
Flycather, for example.
You just have to aim below him, or somewhere nearby, or move out the mic a
bit. You can't filter this "scratch", no way.
2/ Here I mean an acoustical phenomena which is natural, but becomes very
audible when you replay the recordings with loudspeakers, at a higher volume
than in real life. This is common: A listening room is not nature (as you
all know by know...hmm...) and most people tend to replay recordings
(especially parabol recordings) at a too high volume to "simulate" the
feeling and space they had when they were "out there". Even: Someone has a
long and spacy stereo recording of a Nightingale, and loves to replay it at
a high volume, just to show the excellent dynamic. But the result is a
painful harmonic distorsion in your ears.
I remember one of my recordings of a Acrocephalus Dumetorum, one of my
favorites. (see www.telinga.com, click sound galley, but here is another
recording that the one I'm talking about below)
The male in question was so busy singing that I could stand 2 meters away
from him and move around as I pleased to get the best acoustics, it was
almost like a studio situation and I used both a Telinga and a MS mic.
But back home I got so disappointed, because some of the "tiniest, nicest
and most delicate" sounds of the bird came out ugly from my loudepakers.
Next day (night, actually) I went out there again and used my ears only, for
a long time. The "ugly" sound was there!! - just as in the listening room,
but you didn't hear it, or rather - took notice of it.
So if that is "shrill", - too - then it is more a question of making good
and "true" illusions, filtering and compressing.
3/ Exactly as you say: Some birds, like geese and crows, have so high rate
of overtones that a parabol will create just a stupid illusion. This can be
filtered however, if you just fill in the background with a fullrange stereo.
Plausible??
Klas.
At 11:18 2004-02-26 -0500, you wrote:
>Klas:
>
>I too would like to hear answers to your question about defining "shrill".
>According to my dictionary, "shrill" means "high-pitched and piercing". In
>other words, shrill sounds can be a little hard on the ears.
>
>An example is the call of the Spring Peeper. Though not extremely
>high-pitched at 3-3.5 kHz, it is extremely piercing. One only has to walk
>into a chorus and find out. The sound is so piercing that it causes
>distortion in one's ears, probably due to simple overload.
>
>Relative to our discussion of parabolas and the quality of recordings
>obtained from them, I think "shrill" means that the parabola is boosting the
>highs (relative to the midrange) and making high pitched songs or the
>high-pitched portions of songs more obvious.
>
>One notices this when recording the song of the Wood Thrush, where the
>frequency ranges from around 2.5 kHz upwards to 7-8 kHz. Even when recorded
>with a microphone having reasonably flat frequency response (such as my SASS
>unit), it becomes clear that certain parts of certain Wood Thrush songs have
>shrill components that are a very hard on the ears. When one uses a parabola
>and records a Wood Thrush in dead-on focus, it is likely that the shrill
>components of the song will be emphasized even further, which can really
>cause a listener to cringe if the resulting recording is played at high
>level.
>
>This argues for using a parabola setup that has a fairly flat response, at
>least from around 3 kHz upwards to 10 kHz.
>
>Unfortunately, most parabolas don't behave this way. Usually, there is an
>increase in gain (for on-axis sounds) as the frequency increases. At least
>up to a certain point. Thus, if we had a hypothetical bird singing a song
>that ranged from 2 kHz all the way to 10 kHz, a focused parabola will
>probably emphasize the higher components of the song, sometimes with a great
>difference in gain involved. The result is a "distorted" or "skewed"
>recording, where there is a distortion of the loudness spectrum (= loudness
>versus frequency).
>
>Try getting a parabolic recording of a honking Canada Goose. You will be
>amazed at how it will overemphasize the highs in comparison to the lows,
>which can be below 1 kHz for this bird. The resultant recording sounds tinny
>and unnatural. That's why one should use a shotgun mike to record geese.
>Shotgun mikes are superior when recording broad band sounds because the
>frequency response is quite flat for on-axis sounds.
>
>So back to "shrill". I think in this discussion it simply refers to an
>overemphasis of the high end, relative to what one would hear without using
>a parabola or relative to a recording made with a naked omnidirectional
>mike.
>
>Lang
>
>> Can sombody, again, define what "shrill" means.
>>
>> Klas.
>>
>> At 22:39 2004-02-25 -0500, you wrote:
>>> From: "Rich Peet" <>
>>>>
>>>> I use a 32" Greg Clark Parabolic. Not in commercial production.
>>>> http://home.comcast.net/~richpeet/rich.jpg
>>>
>>> Could you give us it's other critical dimensions?
>>>
>>>> I am starting to think that not all people do hear the same way.
>>>
>>> I've made that point numerous times, enough so I'm beginning to wonder
>>> if anyone is listening. Not only do we differ in our physical ears, but
>>> the sound we "hear" is what our brain produces based on the signals from
>>> our ears. This is highly influenced by our experience, our moods, our
>>> attitudes, all previous things we have heard. I simply find it amazing
>>> that we hear even close to the same thing.
>>>
>>> It
>>>> is true that I was blessed with good very high hearing. As a kid I
>>>> played games with other kids at night where I would tell them where a
>>>> bat was going to be comming from because I could hear their echo
>>>> location calls at a distance. Where most people do feel that the
>>>> Telinga makes a complex sound, sound closer, to me it does not, and
>>>> simply makes the sound shrill.
>>>
>>> I, too could hear bats fairly easily when I was young. Not any more. I
>>> do miss hearing things like the sound of bats.
>>>
>>> Sometimes the Telinga produces the nearer effect to me, most often it
>>> does that. And sometimes it is shrill, at least as I understand that
>>> term, like the peepers at the Gopher Frog pond which took considerable
>>> management to record. I'm sure I don't record exactly the same way you
>>> do, and also sure I don't hear sounds the same way you do. I don't like
>>> shrill sounds much, and have learned ways to manage the times I have
>>> that problem with the Telinga.
>>>
>>> Walt
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "Microphones are not ears,
>>> Loudspeakers are not birds,
>>> A listening room is not nature."
>>> Klas Strandberg
>>> Yahoo! Groups Links
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Telinga Microphones, Botarbo,
>> S-748 96 Tobo, Sweden.
>> Phone & fax int + 295 310 01
>> email:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> "Microphones are not ears,
>> Loudspeakers are not birds,
>> A listening room is not nature."
>> Klas Strandberg
>> Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>"Microphones are not ears,
>Loudspeakers are not birds,
>A listening room is not nature."
>Klas Strandberg
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
Telinga Microphones, Botarbo,
S-748 96 Tobo, Sweden.
Phone & fax int + 295 310 01
email:
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