I did a pair of dusk and dawn recordings at the Audubon Kern River
Preserve Friday night and Saturday morning. Sharon met me there,
half-way home from the NAB show in Las Vegas. The place was crazy
with wildlife.
http://www.audubon.org/local/sanctuary/kernriver/
I set up a 4-channel "Rich Peet linear surround array" along a fence
facing a small meadow on the Nature Trail (spot #15). Crickets,
frogs, and wind in the trees in the evening recording. I recorded for
an hour each time. While I did that Sharon walked around and got some
other locations on the trail.
I used my shoulder mic array (currently short tubular EM23s) on a
photo tripod for the front channels, and the klunky 90-degree XLR
shell EM23s on music stand bottoms forty feet out left and right for
the rears.
It was a first test of the Telinga EM23s in surround. When I first
looked at the sonagram I thought there was a problem with the high
frequencies--there was nothing showing above the crickets around 5K,
where I usually see a mist of noise with the settings I customarily
use. That mist was mic noise, now gone!
In the sunrise segment (we overslept and missed dawn) I realized that
there was a constant mid-range roar, like a small waterfall, dead
ahead. In the evening I'd assumed it was wind noise. This was the
first time I've regretted using a linear array. The water noise
wrapped around rather than being in front. Rich's cube or Greg
Weddig's 4-cardioid "gregga tree" would have captured the spaciality
more faithfully.
Over an hour, sync between my Sharp 722 (front) and Sharp 280 (rear)
drifted 300ms, so I used Pitch-'n-Time in classic varispeed mode to
resample the rear recording.
-Dan Dugan
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