Fall through early Spring on a still night, with no air or land
traffic, background levels drop under 1% using 70dB of gain and
25mV/Pa mics. The larger dynamic range of 24 bit recording isn't a
huge benefit. Peaks 15-20dB above background in woodland or prairie
settings are typical. Frogs and insects can raise the background
level but the dynamic range presented can be even lower. Fall thru
early spring, I'm almost always a full gain. A single frog, finch,
crow, squirrel or cricket can call right next to a mic, but I'm happy
to work around these rare moments in order capture the blend of soft
sounds with acoustic reflections. I suspect recordists in tropical
areas encounter wider dynamic ranges and perhaps high mic pre gain is
less of a priority for them. (I'm in Wisconsin at 45 degrees
latitude). But just to give you an idea, if I owned recorder with
85dB of quiet gain, I'd probably use it all from Fall to early Spring
at night. Rob D.
At 11:22 AM +0000 7/11/06, maxfrick78 wrote:
>Hi Rob,
>wow, just 1% bit depth saturation? Can't you crank up the signal, or
>do you deal with
>signals so dynamic that you hit 0 dbFS if you boost them? That would
>be a dynamic range
>of more than 120 dB or so.. If remember correctly 24 bits-files have
>a signal-to-noise
>level of almost 140 dB!
>
>Yeah, for people who own those MS -> ST mics it's definetly good to
>know they can still
>access the discrete M and S channels.
>I have another question but I'll make it a new post since the top is
>different..
>greetings,
>Max
>
>
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