At 3:02 PM +0000 4/20/10, Paul wrote:
>
>
>Hey all..
>I'm at the very early stages of learning this hobby(although I can
>already see where "hobby" may be an unfairly limiting term!), and
>have the following recorders.
>
>1. Sony HI-MD with an inexpensive spit chorded stereo mic.(think it
>came from Church Audio..although cannot recall for sure!).
>2. ZOOM H4N, no additional mics.
>
>Here are my needs:
>Long session outdoor environmental/wildlife recording(12 hour range
>at minimum) at whatever the highest level of quality I can achieve
>in a low noise setting. Recordings must be in stereo as I need to
>determine direction, and some of the target sounds may be rather
>faint and distant.
>
>From doing some searches on here, I understand that the preamp in
>the HI-MD recorder is actually very good, but I have so far been
>unable to figure a way to set it up to record for more then an hour
>or to in PCM mode(and again..I'm not sure it would make much
>difference given the quality of the mics I have to work with). I can
>of course use high capacity HDSD cards in the ZOOM, which I have
>done, to allow me to in theory get higher quality with that...but I
>have just the onboard mics to work with.
>What I need is any offered advice as to how to maximize the use of
>the above, on a rather limited budget. That said...even relatively
>expensive add-ons will be considered if the pay off seems worth it.
>Thanks very much in advance, and I apologize if some of what I ask
>has already been addressed on here. I've searched..but sadly, I fear
>I'm enough of a rookie to not even know what to search for at times!
Hi Paul--
The Hi-SP mode will get you about 8 hours. Use a battery sled for the
recorder, power low-noise condenser mics with a $50-$70 portable
phantom supply: http://tinyurl.com/yyzrnfa
I've used recordings made in Hi-SP mode mixed in with ones made with
a pro recorder and 24 bit wav output without detection. Mics and
micing is much more important. I tended to run the record levels a
little hotter accepting occasional over-mod at times to help the
compression scheme designed for robust signals.
If you're on a low budget and lust high quality ASAP, hang onto the
Hi-MD and start saving for mics. While you do that you can study -up
on sound samples people have posted and the stereo arrays they have
used. Aside from searching mic model numbers and array types through
the list archive
http://bioacoustics.cse.unsw.edu.au/archives/html/naturerecordists/ ,
maybe someone will share a collection of links to recordists' sound
samples they have compiled while conducting a recent search. Rob D.
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