Rob,
Thanks for visualizing the recording location. I'm impressed!
You "see" it as well as I did, and I was there.
At Thu, 3 Jul 2008 03:40:08 -0500, Rob Danielson wrote:
> Says some good things about the built-in mic stereo imaging doesn't it?!
Yes, that was a pleasant surprise.
> 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.
Behind me there was a rise of a meter or so, then it leveled off for
about 10 meters and rose again. It was pretty irregular. Behind me
to my right, about 50 meters down the road, there was a small, flat
rectangular space that had been cut into the hillside, roughly 30
meters deep and 40 meters wide. Behind that area it was very
steep, almost vertical, for about (wild guess) 8-10 meters.
> 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.
At the time I thought I was being extremely quiet, but "cyclist
quiet" and "nature recordist quiet" are on different scales.
Actually, I cut the first minute or so because I was breathing too
hard, and handling noises were pretty loud. There was no place to
sit, so I just squatted at the edge of the road and tried to be as
still as possible.
I can't remember how well I kept the LS-10 pointed in the same
direction. I tried to keep it aimed directly at a particular tree,
but it's pretty easy to rotate left or right a few degrees and alter
the stereo image. It would be better to mount the LS-10 on a stand
or something.
> To put these "valued qualities" into a more realistic frame of
> reference, I can hear sounds 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 [with 21 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 you play LS-10 recordings
> soft so the background sound in the room masks the noise (hiss etc)
> of the mics, the recording will still portray most of what you heard
> on location, accurately. The quieter the mics, the louder one can
> playback the recording and still retain the illusion of transparency.
> Recording technology has advanced to the point of us acquiring
> "bionic ears" as Dan Dugan's partner, Sharon, aptly describes. But
> then, one could also observe that low noise gears gives us hearing
> more like most other mammals enjoy. Rob D.
That's a perfect expression! It's humbling to realize how noisy and
insensitive we humans are, especially with the aggressive filtering
that we do just to get along in civilization. So far my experience
of trying to make quiet recordings has been mostly a matter of
learning to hear noise, or, more accurately, of learning to
recognize noisy environments before actually recording. I'm still
surprised by sounds that I just don't hear without bionic ears.
Thanks again for your enlightening comments on terrain.
- Greg
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