> I see a red switch on the mic, which I believe is for bass roll off.
> Should I have that off or on for recording birds?
Peter,
It makes very little difference if any to the quality of the sound if
you use an early bass roll-off and/or attenuater.
With bird recording you don't need deep bass so you will be rolling it
off at some stage anyway. The benefit of using a bass cut or
attenuater at an early stage is that it saves bass wind noise from
overloading whatever circuit follows. If the input stage overloads,
you can't recover from that and that is why mics, recorders or mixers
often have an input cut. Once it's "blocked off" you've lost the
recording.
Even if there is a small noise penalty using a "low" setting, you can
live with this but not wirh overloading from handling rumble of wind.
Many mics have an extended response down to a few Hertz and below
human hearing. With hand held mics, arm muscles can generate single
digit frequencies at quite a high level. Powered mics can generate
line level signals from wind and rumble.
Pro and amateur, I've always used a bass roll-off as standard. If you
ever need the bass back, you can simply equalise it back in,
expecially with digital, with no loss of quality.
Best Wishes, David
David Brinicombe
North Devon, UK
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce
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