At 12:14 AM +0300 7/3/09, Marinos Koutsomichalis wrote:
>Well,
>
>if the soundscape is really quiet, yeah, the fr2-le will be slightly
>more quiet - but on the other hand even the fr2-le won' t be
>completely quiet.. so in both case you will end up with some short of
>hiss, You need to pay a LOT more to end up with no hiss at all..
Hi Marinos--
It certainly would cost a bunch because I think one would have to
completely reinvent how audio is captured and delivered! :-)
If a FR2-LE is in proper working condition to the specification
Raimund measured, and one uses the lowest-noise, popularly sold mics
(Rode NT1-A's @ 5.5 dB[A] self-noise) at full pre gain, I believe
that all of the noise one would hear would be generated by the mics.
Think of it this way, the input noise generated by the recorder's mic
pre in this example is so much quieter that it becomes inaudible in
the much louder "hiss" that is the self-noise generated even by the
quietest of mics. One can see why there is so much banter about mic
"self-noise" because its the weakest link in the recording chain if
prudence is exercised when selecting a recorder.
Should anyone be additionally curious :-[, Curt, David and I did an
experiment that turned out to provide an excellent example of how
this happens: http://tinyurl.com/ntzraj
How much more noise might the PMD661 have is an interesting question.
Numbers can only tell us so much about these fine distinctions so we
resort to equipment comparison tests. In this test by Tom Robinson,
http://tinyurl.com/bw5wnl one can hear the self-noise of Rode NT1-A
mics mixed together first with the input noise from a Hi-MD recorder
and then with that of a PMD 661. You can detect a slight "bump" or
increase pink noise in the lower mid-range, but they are quite close
in noise performance. Note that this is a "worst case" comparison
where maximum pre gain is used to record a distant clock in a quiet
living room. In this test, http://tinyurl.com/pz78wz , the first
segment presents NT1-A mics connected to a SD 722 whose input noise
is slightly lower than an FR2-LE. The slight "bump" you hear as the
second segment starts should be a little less than the difference
you'd hear between a FR2-LE and the PMD-661 (under the same max gain,
quiet location conditions). If you are recording robust sounds like
loud effects, urban presence, voice, music, then the pre difference
could not be heard. Rob D.
--
|