Hi Raimund--
I wish that we had been able to include more recorders. The ability
to hear the mic self noise so clearly above the pre noise floor in
the booth recordings suggests to me that our everyday living spaces
may have too much Hi Hz content. I guess we could burying the mics
in concrete and blankets,.. I just have a hard time evaluating those
tests.
Regardless of the source of the different sound quality of the ticks
reproduced by the 744T (and possibly the MDP 500 as well) in the
test, I'm not sure about using a recording made in a dampened sound
isolation booth to extrapolate tonal and spatial performance
differences in the field. Distant micing places different demands
on a preamp. While it makes sense that perceived benefits of a pre
amp with "better" close-mic performance in a booth might extend to
distant micing, there are also reasons to suspect the differences
would become smeared. The 744T might very well prove to be capable
of producing a ""fuller and more detailed" sound over the other
recorders in the field, but that is not a conclusion I'm comfortable
reaching through this test. Best, Rob D
At 6:52 AM +0000 3/27/07, Raimund Specht wrote:
>Thanks Rob and all who made this test possible.
>
>I believe that the "fuller and more detailed" sound produced by the SD
>7xx recorder family is mainly caused by their lower high-pass (or
>"low-cut") cutoff frequency. However, I think that it is usually
>required to activate one of the higher SD7xx cutoff frequencies (40,
>80, 160 or 240 Hz) in the field in order to reject wind and handling
>noise. This is certainly required when using more directional
>microphones, such as figure-of-eight or supercardioid pick-up patterns.
>
>The bass response of a recorder is simply determined by the size of
>the coupling capacitors in the analog signal paths. So, one could
>improve the low-frequency response of any recorder by replacing
>(increasing) those capacitors.
>
>In any case, there are of course a lot of other valuable features in
>the SD7xx series recorders that are not available in the less
>expensive units...
>
>Reagrds,
>Raimund
>
>
>--- In Rob Danielson <> wrote:
>>
>> At 8:54 PM +0000 3/26/07, ErnstKarel wrote:
>> >Very interesting. While your comment on that page that "the HD-P2,
>> >HHb MDP 500 and the
>> >Mic2496->HD-P2 combination* performed almost as well as the $4000
>> >744T reference
>> >recorder" is true with respect to noise floor, it sounds to me as if
>> >the sound of the tick-tocks
>> >themselves on the 744 is much fuller and more detailed than the
>> >sound from any of the other
>> >preamps. Which is just a good reminder of what we all know, that
>> >noise floor/tech specs is
>> >only one part of the picture....
>> >
>>
>> Hi Ernst--
>> The 744T and 722 have reproduced ticks with greater relief on other
>> tests too. I don't know, perhaps this is telling,.. the first MDP
>> 500's ticks stand out nicely too. The tenor and brilliance of the
>> electric clock ticks change a lot. In these selections (I choose
>> them on the basis of low background levels) the right tick of the MDP
>> 500 test seems to be softening.
>>
>> The clocks sound to me as if they are about a foot away, but each is
>> 36" away. The dampened room allows one to hear the clock, remarkably,
>> but at the expense of imaging the room. I'm very interested in
>> tonal/spatial imagining performance qualities too; this test
>> situation is the opposite! :-) It is designed to isolate the noise
>> bed of the pres because as sound levels drop and micing distances
>> increase in the field, any noise contributed by the pre-- above that
>> of the mics'-- is something most recordists would be prefer to avoid.
>> Looks like its safe to say this can be done for less than $1000USD.
>> Rob D.
>>
>
>
>
>
>"Microphones are not ears,
>Loudspeakers are not birds,
>A listening room is not nature."
>Klas Strandberg
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
--
Rob Danielson
Peck School of the Arts
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
http://www.uwm.edu/~type/audio-art-tech-gallery/
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