Thanks Klas, Bernie, Rob and Gianni for your helpful responses. My
concerns emerged from using new equipment in an unfamiliar recording
environment. I took the MKH 40/30 rig to Maine, which is such a
quiet environment=97compared to Pennsylvania at this time of year. I
found that I needed to push the gain on the Sony RH10 way beyond what
I usually do in order to get what I considered adequate saturation.
This was necessary because of the quiet environment, and also because
of the apparently less sensitive chain of MKH 40/30 to Rolls to Hi-
MD, compared to my more familiar Telinga EM23's to PIP Hi-MD.
Listening to my Maine recordings I was surprised by the high-end
noise that I was hearing. After reading your posts I have
reconsidered the whole dilemma and have concluded that the issue is
related to low SNR due to lower sensitivity. I repeated the crude
test that I was doing with the clock and substituted a metronome=97much
louder than the very quiet clock. I carefully normalized the
recordings to the peaks of the clicking and then listened carefully
to the valleys. The valleys with the MKH rig are significantly
quieter. I believe that what I was experiencing in the earlier test
was a mistake: the clock was so quiet that I was normalizing
unequally and getting an inaccurate comparison, as Klas suggested.
I've posted this new comparison again on my test page at:
http://tinyurl. com/hx9nq
What I'm beginning to conclude is that my current set-up of MKH 40/30
to Rolls to Hi-MD is much less sensitive than I had expected. I have
no way of comparing this to equipment other than what I have. This
question emerges: should an MKH 40/30 pair be significantly less
sensitive than EM23's which are rated at 10-11.55 mV/Pa? Is this an
anomaly of my equipment=97possibly the Rolls?
Thanks,
Scott
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