Hello all,
Thursday, UPS delivered the Sennheiser ME66/K6 microphone and Friday the US
mail dropped off the box from Sweetwater.com with the HosaTech XLR3F to
1/8" TRS plug cable.
Its a marriage made in heaven. Plug and play! (or record that is).
By 2:30 in the afternoon I was wandering about the treefarm hand holding
the microphone in one hand and the recorder in the other. For a first test
it was a huge success even without the windscreen and shock mount which are
still in the hands of UPS to be delivered next week.
Along the back edge of the treefarm, in the woods beyond I could hear an
Oriole, he was about 100 feet back in the tall oak trees, I couldn't see
him and pointed the ME66 microphone in his general direction and recorded
one of his bursts of song.
At that point I returned home and downloaded the short recording and its
full of the Oriole's audio, a very satisfactory first test.
Prior to this test, I've been using a Sennheiser MKE 300 small shotgun mic
with a monaural cord and plug made for video cameras. The difference is
like night and day, there is no comparison in amount of sound the ME 66/K6
puts out compared to the MKE 300 which is a real surprise to me. The MKE
300 is specked at 16mv/Pa sensitivity (same as the NTG-2) and the ME 66 is
specked at 50mv/Pa and man, what a difference in the field.
Another key difference noticed right off, the HosaTech XVM-105F cable, XLR
pin 2 being wired to both tip and ring of the 1/8" plug so the ME 66/K6
output is on both channels of the LS-11 makes a huge improvement to my
ear...
And sensitivity to sounds in the distance, the MKE 300 is barely able to
record a bird two hundred feet distant, its right at the noise floor, you
can barely hear it when played back. Yet the same bird with the ME66/K6 is
about half scale on the record bargraph.
The bad news is I'm already thinking about a ME67 cartridge at some point
as where I live is mostly all residential area, too many roads and cars and
school buildings with air conditioning plants on the roof and two airports
near by within four miles. While the ME66/K6 helps quite a bit, I can see
where a mic with more side rejection of the unwanted/undesirable noise
would help...
Its going to be a long weekend waiting for the ME66/K6 mount and windscreen
to get here...
Good nature sounds Y'all...
Mitch & Shadow...
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