Dear tekno_mac,
Welcome to the group. It's a good thing when you can walk outside your
front door and enter a quiet world to which many of us have to drive.
Good for you. I'm very curious about your research and results
regarding more quiet mics.
Tom
--- In "tekno.mage" <> wrote:
>
> Firstly, I'd like to thank existing members of the group for
contributing to the wealth of
> useful information & lively debates I've found here so far.
>
> After living & working in the south of England most of our lives, my
partner and I moved to
> a remote old stone farm house in rural mid-wales early last year.
The absence of man-
> made noise & light pollution here is wonderful!
>
> On fine days, the only sounds outside are made by wildlife. On still
nights the silence is
> almost total (less than 50dB, my dB meter doesn't go down any
lower!) broken only by
> calls of barn owl or rustlings from creatures in the undergrowth.
Bats roost in the eves of
> the house & emerge at dusk on summer nights. They chitter softly in
the audible
> frequency range as they leave the roost. Fatballs hung for the
birds in the apple tree
> outside the kitchen window attract blue tits, great tits, nuthatch
and woodpeckers. Raven,
> buzzard & red kite are often seen overhead.
>
> Surrounded by all this wildlife somewhere potentially so quiet
(weather permitting)
> rekindled our interest in wildlife recording. We'd tried to record
nesting rooks a some
> years ago but with poor results - due to continual man-made noise
(mainly from traffic &
> aircraft) audible in the local countryside and the limitations of
our portable cassette
> equipment. We tried with a portable minidisk recorder a few years
later - the tape hiss had
> gone, but the combination of increased traffic noise and early
minidisk compression was
> no improvement!
>
> Luckily moving house had left a little spare money available, just
at the time when was a
> choice of affordable solid state audio recorders available. After
studying all the technical
> specifications & some internet research, we bought a Tascam HD-P2
and so far are very
> pleased with it.
>
> A few weeks ago, on a nice still day, we fitted our Behringer
measuring mike into a tube of
> foam pipe insulation and tied it up in the apple tree near to a
hanging fatball to see what
> we could record. A long XLR cable ran in through the slightly open
kitchen window to the
> HD-P2 on the kitchen table. Switching to the internal speaker of
the HD-P2 filled the
> downstairs rooms with birdsong - so we left the recorder running for
a couple of hours
> and went about our normal business, popping back into the kitchen to
note down the time
> every time we heard any interesting bird sounds.
>
> I copied the resultant .WAV onto my Mac and played it back - and it
was immediately
> obvious that a much lower noise mic will be needed. What I had taken
to be noise due to
> monitoring on the HD-P2's internal speaker *was* on the recording.
Despite this, we did
> record some interesting "blue tit politics" as they argued over the
fat ball, some lovely
> whirring of wings, noisy landings on branches, tits pecking at seeds
(and one pecking at
> the mic), a nearby blackbird song, a distant passing raven, and as
dusk fell, the call of a
> barn owl.)
>
> We are now in the process of deciding on a new low noise microphone
- without having to
> spend large amounts of cash. The price of decent quality shotgun
mikes is somewhat
> scary, and as a next stage we are considering the Rode NT1A due to
it's very low self-
> noise. I've already read many posts to this forum regarding the
unsuitability of this type of
> mic to damp conditions, initially we would only use it for outside
on a still, dry day to
> record the birds that come close to the house, and maybe the audible
sounds made by the
> bats - although it will be interesting to see if the bat sounds
above 20KHz could be
> recorded, then pitch shifted down with software on the Mac to make
them audible.
>
> My partner recently acquired an old satellite TV parabolic dish -
it's made of heavy beige
> plastic & is about 4ft in diameter, but has a rather shallow dish.
He's going to try and
> mount it on a video camera tripod and make a DIY support for a mic,
so we can set it up in
> the yard to try for more directional recordings of birds in trees
opposite the house, or on a
> nearby barn roof - which seems to be a favourite place from them to
sing!
>
> We will let you know how successful any of the above is!
>
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