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Re: Hello and a Sony PCM D100 question

Subject: Re: Hello and a Sony PCM D100 question
From: "Dan Dugan" dandugan_1999
Date: Wed Jun 25, 2014 3:45 pm ((PDT))
Secrets of the trade. Tape saturation was valuable for that effect.

Reminds me of a codger tale:

There was a Mercury Living Presence recording of the Tchaikovski 1812 Overture 
that had tracks of the sound effects (cannons and bells) on the B side. That 
was for me a source of the best cannon shot for theatrical use for many years. 
Boom!

Imagine my anticipation when it was announced that it had been re-recorded in 
stereo! I was very disappointed when I got the record. Crack. It seems that the 
engineers had recorded the cannon "right," that is, they hadn't let it 
overload. Useless for dramatic purposes.

What's important in an explosive sound is the return from the environment. The 
initial pulse is so much higher in level that if you record it right, the 
environment is lost many tens of decibels down.

Same for door slams.

-Dan


On Jun 25, 2014, at 11:40 AM,  [naturerecordists] 
<> wrote:

> 
>> 1) Use the S/N 100db feature for quiet ambient recordings.
> 
> Clive, 
> 
> Yes, but keep the peak level low as you will lose nothing by bringing it up 
> later. I'm still analysing some test recordings. and the noise level seems 
> to be very low. 
> 
>> 2) For recordings such as thunderstorms then switch to the Noise limiter 
>> option instead.
> 
> No. Limiters leave a hole after a peak which sounds naff. Thunder is one of 
> few sounds which sound better distorted. If you don't believe me, try it. 
> 
> The same applies to recording gunshots. Years ago I used a miniature Nagra 
> tape recorder which had a very fast limiter for gunshots and they came out 
> like popcorn, followed by a pause, then a rush of echoes. The classic 
> gunshot sound is "kshew kshew" which is obtained by a large amount of 
> distortion. 
> 
> 
> David Brinicombe 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------
> Posted by: 
> ------------------------------------
> 
> "While a picture is worth a thousand words, a 
> sound is worth a thousand pictures." R. Murray Schafer via Bernie Krause.
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------
> 
> Yahoo Groups Links
> 
> 
> 







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