At 7:28 AM -0700 7/18/09, Dan Dugan wrote:
>
>
> > I finally got around to making simultaneous recordings (of a very
>> boring suburban soundscape) with a sampling of current generation
>> handheld recorders:
>>
> > * Nagra ARES-MII
>> * Sony PCM-D1
>> * Sony PCM-D50
>> * Olympus LS-10
>> * Zoom H4n
>> * Sennheiser MKH-800 Mid-Side pair on a Nagra VI (OK, not exactly
>> pocket size, but a useful baseline)
> > * A mystery mic that I'll describe later
>
>> For whatever it's worth, the audio can be found at:
>> <http://www.crypto.com/audio/shootout/>http://www.crypto.com/audio/shootout/
>
>That's worth a lot, thank you very much, Matt.
>
>-Dan Dugan
Hi Matt-
Same here!
Matching background presence between the files (there were very small
differences in levels from your peak matches), I found HF noise
performance using the built-in mics performance decreased in this
order:
Sennheiser MKH-800 (reference)
Sony PCM-D1 (tie with) Sony PCM-D50
Zoom H4n
Olympus LS-10
Nagra ARES-MII
Mystery mic (The HF response of this mic seems considerably compromised)
The dog bark provided me the most useful medium range stereo imaging
and overall tonal comparisons. The background ambience was most
useful for detecting the self-noise of the mics and wide stereo
imaging.
http://tinyurl.com/m6vvcj (9mb QT movie)
http://tinyurl.com/m7m6ma (mp3 with bark and pres samples in this order
Sennheiser MKH-800 (reference)
Sony PCM-D1
Sony PCM-D50
Zoom H4n
Olympus LS-10
Nagra ARES-MII
Mystery mic
A few things I noticed:
(1) The LS-10's and ARES-MII's built-in mics are significantly brighter.
(2) The built in mics have much less lateral stereo imaging than the
M-S reference but among these, the Zoom H4n and the Mystery X-Y mic
seem to be slightly wider.
(3) The built-in mics on the H4n seem to be a little quieter than
those in the LS-10. The LS-10's built-in mics are noisy enough to
lose the advantage this recorder should have over the H4n based on
input noise measurements of the mic preamps of these two recorders.
(4) The D50 has better frequency response under 130Hz than the D1.
The H4n also has pretty good response in the lowest frequencies
I guess its predictable (though unfortunate) that one would be able
to hear the self-noise of the built-in mics in surburban environment,
but it is interesting to hear how much less audible HF self-noise
there is in the built-in mics of the Sony units-- consistent with
Raimund's comment of a few days ago.
The stereo imaging of all of the built-in mics does seem to be
minimal for distant subjects.
I'm guessing the "mystery" mics are off the shelf DIY electrets
perhaps from radio shack plugged into a H2.
Thanks again,
Rob D.
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