At 7:12 AM -0700 4/26/09, Jim Morgan wrote:
>Having noticed an excessive amount of noise in my recordings I
>decided to see just how much was ambient and how much was from my
>equipment.
>
>I used my workshop room located in the in the corner of my house
>that is constructed of two concrete block walls on one side and
>frame walls on the other two walls as a sound room. The first test
>had very faint 60 cycle buzzing and the ticking of a battery
>operated clock. The second test was with the clock removed and the
>lights turned off.
>
>This recording was noiseless to my ears when played through
>headphones at normal volume. The waveform on my monitor screen was a
>single straight line with a few tiny dots on it.
Hi Jim--
As you seem to have determined, what one considers to be "normal
volume," has many consequences. The judgement, for example, tends to
reflect whether one is considering the "room tone" or "ambience" in a
recording to be part of the "subject" or meaningless "background"
upon which, louder, meaningful sound events occur. If the local,
acoustic qualities of a quiet setting are considered part of the
"subject," (not a typical assignment for a dish, of course) one will
usually be able to hear noise in the background if of interest to the
recordist. I believe this will be the case even with the quietest
mics and pres. In most cases, if a dish is used, as designed, to
amplify a selected, non-background sound source and the level of that
sound source is played back at a comfortable level, then the
background (and the noise embedded in it) has been rendered pretty
inconsequential by the use of the dish and lower playback volume.
>My conclusion was the noise in my recordings was, for all practical
>purposes, all ambient noise, mostly wind and distant road noise.
You wrote that you are hearing unwanted noise in your outdoor
recordings,.. Have you concluded that you'd prefer to not hear the
environmental noises the gear is picking up should you crank-up
playback?
>My equipment is good but not state of the art and consists of:
>
>Telinga parabolic stereo mic
>
>Sony MZ R50 minidisc recorder
>
>A SONY MDS-JB 920 deck for downloading to a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
>sound card and played back thru a Sony 6GCH amplifier using Sony
>MDR-7506 head phones.
Probably helps that you are using using digital transfers, too.
>
>Needless to say I was very pleased with the test results.
I agree that there may not be too much reason to get caught-up in the
frenzy for the new recorders. One has to listen to the recordings
several times anyway; once during the real-time transfer shouldn't be
a problem. :-)
Some of the Sony and Sharp MD's appear to have lower-noise mic pres
than quite a few of the new pocket recorders and significant
improvements in quality usually start with the mics. The Telinga is
solid, low-noise/high output component in your set-up and a good
match for the MZ R50 minidisc recorder both in terms of "specs" and,
most importantly, to your ears. Rob D.
>
>Best regards to all,
>
>Jim Morgan
>Prescott, Arizona
>
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