Hi There,
A short comment on my feelings of these findings? I guess it depends on
one's intended use of a mic capable of reproducing ultrasonic
frequencies. My interest is as an aesthetic tool for sound design,
where I'd record ultrasonic and then vari-speed (i.e. change the sample
rate header in the file) to drop an octave or few. With higher than CD
sampling rates, this offers the promise of having something to listen
to above 10 kHz in the pitched-down file.
But maybe that's not the audience Sennheiser considered the primary
user of the MKH800. (FYI, I work on the remote recording truck for Neil
Youn'g Bridge School benefit concert. This year, Tony Bennet's
enginener brought an MKH800 to use on upright bass). As the Sennheiser
representative pointed out, the self-noise of the mic was pushed out
into non-audible ranges--unless of course you are planning to slow the
playback down to 1/2 or 1/4 speed.
I don't have any Schopes "XT" bodies, just regular CMC5 and CMC6
amplifiers, so I can't comment on the XT's performance. In my tests
with the schopes on an earlier experiment, I did note plenty of audible
noise in the ultrasonic when dramatically slowing down the sound of
dropping tiny drill-bits onto concrete. But I didn't see the noise
floor rising with frequency with the Schopes that was noted with the
MKH800. Of course, my test measured only noise, it did not indicate
anything about the mic's ability to actually pick up sound in the
ultrasonic range. There's plenty of room here for further study.
As far as the bat sounds we recorded, they are noisy and sound like
short descending bird chirps. We had only one MKH800, so the recordings
are mono. If I were to try again, I'd experiment with placement to see
if we could get closer to the bat's exit area, and even consider a dish
to get more acoustic gain.
Rudy
>
> Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 19:14:04 -0800 (PST)
> From: Aaron Ximm <>
> Subject: Re: MHK 800 prelim field test discussion
>
> Heya Bernie, Rudy,
>
> Could you offer a short comment on your feelings on these findings? I
> don't mind saying that while I presume as flat noise floor as possible
> would be desirable, I'm ignorant as to whether your data suggests a
> significant problem -- or how it would relate to the sensitivity across
> the same range (which I recall gets pretty non-flat above 30K or so!).
>
> E.g., I've no idea what one would expect from a mic only spec'd to 20K
> or
> so (like the MKH20) by comparison.
>
> Also, would you mind a very brief comment on how the noise floor
> *level*
> compares to the other options you mention? I'd be curious too to know
> how
> the Schoeps hi-frequency body fares by comparison... :)
>
> Oh! And if you took it out to record those bats, how did it sound? Did
> you
> use them in M/S? :)
>
> someone who's daydreamed about a pair,
> despite never hearing/using them!
>
> aaron
>
>
> http://www.quietamerican.org
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