Skip to last paragraph for the actual question.
I'm another novice to field recording currently using a laptop. Lots
of good comments so far all of which I agree with. For my purposes it
has worked so far to be limited to the back or front seat of my truck
since most of my initial interest has been in recording on WMAs where
one is supposed to remain in one's vehicle. Of course I know which
ones are not patrolled. ;-) But not to worry I am always respectful
of the wildlife and their home.
I'm using an inexpensive interface - a Tascam US-122 - and so far I've
beem too preoccupied with reducing other types of noise ( wind, etc)
to really get down to the fine points of how much inherent noise there
is in the system. My initial attempts were made last season with a
pair of Nakamichi CM-300s (70's era self-powered condensers with
interchangeable caps)mostly in either roughly XY or ORTF config.
While I was happy with the sound quality I became pretty bogged down
trying to devise good windscreens, which due to the mic's size really
needed to be zeppelins. I didn't finish them by the end of migration
season.
This year I'm trying a new approach, still with a laptop, involving
Shure WL-183 (lavalier omnis) which unaltered connect through a belt
pack pre with a 9V battery. An XLR cable runs from the belt pack to
my US-122, which is the USB to the laptop. My question is this: both
the belt pack and the US-122 contain preamps - I haven't noticed any
problems but is there anything to watch out for having two pres in the
line? Do they just add up? If so, I imagine gain and noise might
both increase together? Would I be better of to remove the batteries
and just use the US-122s phantom power?
Thanks,
Ken
P.S. progrep: this weekend I built two prototypes of variable
boundary-type arrays for the 183s and ran some prelimanry tests which
were quite encouraging. Many thanks to Curt Olson for his experiments
along the same lines which were the starting point for me, and his
generous help since. I'll post separately later some questions that
came up, and maybe some pics of the arrays.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
|