Good morning from London, England. Just a few words to introduce myself...
>From the moment I opened up an old transistor radio I've had a deep interest
>in audio. My first recordings were made on a compact cassette recorder in the
>late 1970s; I still have those early recordings (archived as WAVs) and have
>removed the noise using a mix of Goldwave and Adobe Audition.
In the early 90s I trained as a broadcast engineer; sound was my speciality,
but this was more technical side related to broadcast techniques (AM, FM, FM
Stereo, NICAM)
Over the past two decades I have recorded on MiniDisc, a Zoom H2, and now a
Sony PCM-M10 together with a Rode NT3 and Rode Video Mic. I love these
microphones; they produce clear, low noise sound, that I find pleasant to
listen to. The Sony PCM-M10 is a recent purchase and I have been dumbstruck at
the quality of its recordings. I thought the Zoom H2 was superb, but the Sony
is so much more defined and has much lower self noise.
Now to my question. I need to record the sounds made by rabbits. They do make
extremely quiet vocalisations; so quiet that they are almost inaudible unless
you know what to listen for. It's difficult to describe the sound, but 'grunt'
comes close - very short bursts of principally low frequency sounds. they also
squeak and 'quack' but these are not the sounds I want to capture.
The problem is that I need very small, sensitive, low noise microphones to
capture the sound. As the sounds will be captured in a domestic environment
(inside a house) the only sounds I'll need to reject are of electrical
appliances operating in adjacent rooms, and cars passing by. There will no wind
or other weather to worry about. The NT2 and Video Mic are capable of capturing
the sounds I'm after, but they are too large and attract the attention of
rabbits. And rabbits like to gnaw things, especially new, expensive items! I
have already lost two foam windshields and numerous cables to rabbits, and
can't afford to lose entire microphones.
So, could anybody suggest either low cost, low noise, sensitive, unobtrusive
microphones or components to construct such a microphone? I can't supply
phantom power, so batteries or plug-in power is preferred.
Thanking you all in advance of any suggestions.
JM
|