Posted by: "Jim Lee"
>
> With that kind of dish you might as well try one of these little devices=
> from Wild Planet toys. I bought one just for kicks. It actually works.
> Of course it is not for serious recordists but for kids getting started,=
> it is hard to beat for the price. A tinkerer might even be able to hack
> it up to better performance. The older version of this toy from the same=
> company had a larger dish, more like Buck Rogers than James T. Kirk.
> *http://tinyurl.com/3b4dnz
No amount of tinkering will change the size of that dish. Because it's
so small it will have poor gain, and gain is why you use a parabolic.
This will be particularly noticeable in the lower frequencies where the
natural characteristics of parabolics give only a small amount of gain
even with a bigger dish.
I can record callers 300' away with plenty of gain with my SASS, which
has no parabolic dish and which I consider my close mic. But if the
caller is hundreds of yards away I often can record it fine with the
Telinga parabolic. And, with the Telinga I have recorded frogs from a
mile away. Those were truly inaudible by ear, unlike something only 300'
away.
Remember you can use up a lot of money buying endless almost good enough
stuff. Or you can put all that money together and buy one good piece of
equipment that can keep you going for a lifetime. (actually for some
they could buy a whole case of good stuff for what they spend).
BTW, my first dish mic was much larger than this one, it was a
photoflood reflector.
Walt
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