> And then there's unnatural sources. 200dB air horns, 160dB shotgun,
> and I could swear than one flight I was on that the ding for the
> stewardess was at least 140dB. I was about ready to start
> dismantling an airplane by the end of that flight.
James,
Now you're winding me up. :-) 194dB(SPL) is the theoretical maximum
set by atmosperic pressure and I think 192dB is the practical maximum.
I've worked out some figures for my favourite mic the MKH-416 which is
a pro standard. It will deliver 1 volt at 120 dBs(SPL) into a mixer,
but they don't like that up them. To cope with 140dB it would have to
deliver 10V and at 160dB, 100V, enough for a lightbulb. To cope with
192 dB, it would have to output 3980V without distorting. :-)
>40,000 hours is about 13.7 years of 8 hour days of recording 7 days a
>week.
8 hours a day? Where can Recordists get that sort of work? In a film
crew, I did more than my fair share of 100 hour weeks over the 25
years and overtime was only time and a half max. (no union) Film was
$200 equivalent a 10 minute roll, and we would carry 100+ rolls on a
foreign trip, plus 1/4 inch. When we converted to video, cassettes
were a fraction of that cost and weren't even worth reusing. With
digital, DigiBeta is still used, so you can carry terabytes of cheap
storage. It was so cheap we overshot and the editors sometimes hadn't
enough time to even view them.
Coming back on topic, I'm recording on mp3 at 360KB/s, but I'm merrily
using up disc space. I've been running my rig overnight to get owls at
the moment, and I've got the editor's problem of not enough time to
play them all back, but I find the waveformDB function on Audacity and
the sonogram very useful for visually picking out potential goodies.
David
David Brinicombe
North Devon, UK
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce
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