Hi Raimund--
Agreed. Personal uses vary to the point of irrelevance. For me, a
good recorder, by definition, does not compromise my mics'
performance. I differ from some recordists in that I make recordings
that hope to capture the acoustic space the animals are relating
within as well. I rarely use less than full gain. I position mics to
balance the loud callers within the space, not isolate them. Quite a
few nature recordists take this approach.
I think we have an influence on manufacturers. Most of them need to
do a better job in making these small recorders that are introducing
lots of people to recording for the first time. Unnecessarily,
their poor quality mic pres are jeopardizing important recordings
every day.
Some recordists are happy tolerating the compromises of a slightly
noisy mic pre but when we applaud it, we give manufacturers an
opportunity to justify sloppy work. It wouldn't cost them any more
parts-wise, and a talented and bored engineer somewhere might get a
fun project and a raise. :-) Rob D.
At 9:27 AM +0000 8/15/09, Raimund Specht wrote:
> Rob, you wrote:
>
>> The conditions under which people use the gear vary so much that I
>> feel a silly obligation to maintain some clarity in the conclusions
>> we reach. I wasn't so much trying to confirm the pre noise difference
>> between the recorders but whether the input noise in the LS-10 is
>> sufficiently low for the two mentioned mics.
>
>When we compare the absolute self-noise level of the Sennheiser
>K6/ME66 (-110dBu) with the noise level that I measured for the LS-10
>at SENSE LOW, 10, 16Bit (-113dBu) then the K6/ME66 noise would
>(theoretically) not completely mask the preamp noise. However, it
>might be that the Telinga microphone is more sensitive (in terms of
>the mV/Pa specification) and would therefore safely mask the LS-10
>noise.
>
>Depending on the specific recording situation, I would say that the
>preamp noise is often not that important. Personally, I wouldn't
>care much about an increase of the overall self-noise level of lets
>say 1 or 2 dB that might be caused by the poor preamplifier. I would
>just accept this minor disadvantage for the small size and weight of
>a particular recorder. For instance, I'm quite happy with the rugged
>TASCAM DR-1 (-115dBu on MIN IN 2) in combination with the K6/ME66
>for recording individual animals.
>
>Regards,
>Raimund
>
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