At 11:09 AM +0900 7/3/08, Greg Peterson wrote:
Rob wrote:
>
> > There seems to be a bit more echo coming from the right and from the
> > deep center. Do you happen to recall if that is consistent with the
> > setting? Rob D.
At 11:09 AM +0900 7/3/08, Greg Peterson replied:
>Yes. I was facing a valley. Uphill narrowed quickly on my left and
>wound around behind me a bit, with low hills on the other side.
>Downhill spread out on my right, with rice paddies about 100 meters
>below and a higher mountain either in front or just a little to my
>right. Behind me and a little to my right the hill behind the road
>was pretty close, and it leveled out to the left (up). Right in
>front was a very low hill (1.5-2 meters), and the bird was in a tree
>there, about 15-20 meters from me.
>
Says some good things about the built-in mic stereo imaging, doesn't it?!
Did the hill by the road behind you have quite a bit of relief
compared to the other features? Reflections can usually be traced to
the surfaces that are most vertical with the closer/higher ones being
louder. The temporal and color characteristics of the echo can
reveal shapes of the landforms and vegetation in the mind's eye. In
this case, the possibility of valley straight ahead. When its quiet
(and it must be quiet to detect these qualities) the "tail" of
echoes become masked in the self-noise of the mics or other low level
background sound(s). These are very low sound levels that push the
abilities of the quietest mics and most optimized stereo arrays.
I also enjoy the portrayal of the human in your recording as detected
through the soft, low frequency bumps that are subliminally audible
before you shift the recorder in your grasp and reveal everything.
To put these obsessions into practical experience, I can hear sound
events with my NT2000 mics [7dB(A) self noise] that I simply cannot
hear with my naked ears when standing next to the mics. This doesn't
happen with my Shure WL-183's [22 dB(A) self noise] and begins to
happen with my MBHO 603's [14dB(A) self-noise]. I'd guess that the
built-in mics on the LS-10 have around 30 dB(A) self noise. However,
if one plays LS-10 recordings soft so the background sound in the
room masks the noise of the mics (the hiss etc.), the recording will
still portray most of what one heard on location and quite
accurately. The quieter the mics, the louder one can playback the
recording and still retain an illusion of transparency. Recording
technology has advanced to the point of humans acquiring "bionic
ears" as Dan Dugan's partner, Sharon, aptly describes. But then, one
could also observe that very low noise performance gives us hearing
more like other mammals. Rob D.
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