Hi Marc,
I have not used the Zoom H1 but your recording of the Bell Miners was
lovely, complete with dripping water, and any self noise was
minimal. Mind you the Bell Miners do have loud calls so that would
have helped. The Nattai track had more noise but lovely Brown
Thornbills.
You will have to decide if you want to record in mono or stereo. If
you want recordings like Paul Jacobson and Andrew Skeoch you will
need to go with stereo. The recording by Paul on the AWSRG page
probably does not have any filtering at all and definitely has no
mixing of sounds, i.e. this is a true audio picture of the location.
Paul uses low noise mics Audio Technica 3032, a pair of them, and in
this case they were mounted in a home made rig similar to one of Curt
Olson's, see http://www.trackseventeen.com/mic_rigs.html
You will see from Andrew's web site that he now uses Sennheiser MKH20
mics in a Knapp-modified SASS head. Paul's rig and Andrew's rig give
similar results in sound quality. Andrew uses a Sound Devices 722
recorder, Paul was using a Tascam HDP2 Oade modified, for the
Gundabooka track.
I made a thunderstorm comparison of a SASS rig same as Andrew's
running to a Sound Devices 702, compared with my home made Powys SASS
Lite rig to an Olympus LS10, you can hear the results at the bottom
of my recording gear page http://www.caperteebirder.com/index.php?
p=1_17_recording-gear . The Lite rig compares very well! This is
just to show you that you do not necessarily need to spend a huge
amount of money to get good results.
More examples from my SASS Lite rig here: http://
www.caperteebirder.com/index.php?p=1_19_sounds I have not used any
filtering or mixing, these are raw recordings.
The AWSRG (Australian Wildlife Sound Recording Group) website is
currently not fully operational as we are changing over web masters.
Should anyone wish to join it is around $50 a year for 2 journals and
2 CDs. Please contact me and I will forward your details to our
secretary. Our next workshop will be in Western Australia 18-23
September!
Vicki Powys
Sound Editor
Australian Wildlife Sound Recording Group
On 11/08/2011, at 7:09 PM, mrmarcanderson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am a keen birder & photographer & I have just recently delved
> into the world of audio recording.
>
> I purchased a Zoom H1 recorder for a project I was working on
> (voice recording on location) & thought I would test it out on some
> nature ambiences. The results were mixed - I was pleasantly
> surprised with the recording if I was up close to the calling birds
> (see Bell Miner colony - http://soundcloud.com/marcanderson/bell-
> miner-colony-blue ) but in most cases the birds were not so loud &
> close as these and this seemed to highlight the limitations of this
> $100 recorder, as it seemed to be exhibiting a lot of self noise
> (see Nattai National Park http://soundcloud.com/marcanderson/nattai-
> national-park )
>
> My question is: How can I get high quality recordings without much
> self-noise, even if the birds are distant or quiet? I have done a
> bit of searching on the forum & I am considering a Sennheiser
> ME66 / K6 to start with. If I plugged this into my Zoom H1 would
> the Zoom's self- noise still be evident? If so, what would I need
> to spend on a recorder to get a significant improvement?
>
> After owning and listening to many of Listening Earth's recordings
> (Andrew Skeoch - http://www.listeningearth.com), I find it hard to
> be satisfied with anything less! Also, when I listen to something
> like - http://www.awsrg.org.au/ (play the Gundabooka 2009 file at
> the bottom of the page) I'm thinking thats the sort of stuff I'd
> love to be able to record. Minimal hissing/noise, loads of subtle
> quiet sounds picked up.
>
> How much of these wonderful recordings do you think are done in
> post-processing? ie. layers of different recordings, noise
> reduction etc?
>
> I know there is no simple, straightforward answer to my questions
> but any advice you can offer from your experience I would really
> appreciate. I'm travelling through Sabah & Sarawak in October & it
> would be great to get some decent equipment for then!
>
>
>
>
>
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