At 8:36 AM +0000 5/28/08, Raimund Specht wrote:
>The Great Reed-Warbler was singing on the left hand side (lets say at
>about 10 o'clock relative to the recorder axis).
>
>Regards,
>Raimund
The Korg DR1's and Sony D50's internal mic arrays seem to have better
horizontal spread/localization imaging than the LS-10 and R09. Why
Sony and DR1's stereo images are flipped left <-> right is a bit of a
mystery.
"Point and shoot" recording is not about making the best recordings
one can, but in addition to high self-noise "hiss" and "fuzz" from
the internal mics, one could also capture much more accurate and
immersive stereo imagery with external mics using head-like spacing,
and other non-coincident arrays. Many recordists have developed
ingenious ways of body mounting these rigs for hands-free micing.
Perhaps someone with a pair of WL183's can compare the imaging of
their "point and shoot" recorders internal mics to that of their
favorite externally mounted 183's using the same recorder. It would
be interesting to compare the self-noise of the 183's to the internal
mics too.
As Walt pointed out some time ago, new gear always seems promising
partially because its unknown,.. yet, the roles of curiosity can't be
ignored either. Pursuing semi-educated guesses has led field
recordists to considerable success in getting higher quality results
at lower cost. Though I appreciate the concept of a pocket-sized,
self-contained recorder, I'm not overly-excited about these
recorders' internal micing options if I'm going out to record any
subject where I'll need high gain and if striking stereo imagery is
an important possibility. Raimund's test has reminded me, again,
that all mics require substantive wind protection and most likely,
shock-mounting, if hand-held in quiet settings.
I hope genuinely curious folks don't buy one of these pocket
recorders thinking the internal micing option can give them a taste
of the pleasures of realizing low-noise, spatially rich field
recordings. I encourage such newcomers to risk falling in love with
recording the "world" around them and perhaps become full-time,
engaged listeners. Rob D.
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