[Mike Rivers]

It seems that at least once every couple of weeks someone wants to
"record nature sounds" and is asking about a suitable recorder or
microphone. Will a dozen or so of you please explain the fascination
with this to me? What do you record and what do you do with the
recordings?

This is not a simple thing to do if you want accuracy, so I'm assuming
that either you want a natural sound (at a natural volume level) to
use as a sound effect or ambient background, or you want to make
something grotesque out of the sound, perhaps by amplifying it greatly
(making the bumblebee sound as loud as the lead guitar in a mix) or
distort or pitch-shift it.

Or do we have some legitimate naturalists who are indeed collecting
natural sounds for reference or research?

Educate me.

[Don Pearce]

On 17 Mar 2007 04:34:15 -0700, "Mike Rivers"
wrote:

It seems that at least once every couple of weeks someone wants to
"record nature sounds" and is asking about a suitable recorder or
microphone. Will a dozen or so of you please explain the fascination
with this to me? What do you record and what do you do with the
recordings?

This is not a simple thing to do if you want accuracy, so I'm assuming
that either you want a natural sound (at a natural volume level) to
use as a sound effect or ambient background, or you want to make
something grotesque out of the sound, perhaps by amplifying it greatly
(making the bumblebee sound as loud as the lead guitar in a mix) or
distort or pitch-shift it.

Or do we have some legitimate naturalists who are indeed collecting
natural sounds for reference or research?

Educate me.

You record what you want to record.

You don't answer to anybody else for your choice.

End of.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[Ty Ford]

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 07:47:00 -0400, Don Pearce wrote
(in article ):

On 17 Mar 2007 04:34:15 -0700, "Mike Rivers"
wrote:

It seems that at least once every couple of weeks someone wants to
"record nature sounds" and is asking about a suitable recorder or
microphone. Will a dozen or so of you please explain the fascination
with this to me? What do you record and what do you do with the
recordings?

This is not a simple thing to do if you want accuracy, so I'm assuming
that either you want a natural sound (at a natural volume level) to
use as a sound effect or ambient background, or you want to make
something grotesque out of the sound, perhaps by amplifying it greatly
(making the bumblebee sound as loud as the lead guitar in a mix) or
distort or pitch-shift it.

Or do we have some legitimate naturalists who are indeed collecting
natural sounds for reference or research?

Educate me.

You record what you want to record.

You don't answer to anybody else for your choice.

End of.

d

Stale danish this AM, Don?

Mike, I've been asking people to do this on a regular basis just to create a
pique and peak your curiosity. Sorry for any undue duress.

Regards,

Ty Ford



--Audio Equipment Reviews Audio Production Services
Acting and Voiceover Demos http://www.tyford.com
Guitar player?:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RZJ9MptZmU

[Scott Dorsey]

Don Pearce wrote:

You record what you want to record.

You don't answer to anybody else for your choice.

End of.

Unless what you happen to want to record is someone else's concert.
In which case you might have an awful lot of answering to do.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[anahata]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

Unless what you happen to want to record is someone else's concert.
In which case you might have an awful lot of answering to do.

Perhaps that's a clue to Mikes answer.
The birds, bees and trees doen't send their laywers after you for royalties.

--
Anahata
-+- http://www.treewind.co.uk
Home: 01638 720444 Mob: 07976 263827

[Mike Rivers]

On Mar 17, 7:47 am, (Don Pearce) wrote:

You record what you want to record.
You don't answer to anybody else for your choice.

Don, you seem like a smart guy. Why are you such an asshole some
times? Or do you have a "forger" too?

(Yes, I wanted to answer you)

[RDOGuy]

On Mar 17, 6:34 am, "Mike Rivers" wrote:

It seems that at least once every couple of weeks someone wants to
"record nature sounds" and is asking about a suitable recorder or
microphone. Will a dozen or so of you please explain the fascination
with this to me? What do you record and what do you do with the
recordings?

I haven't done any for a long time, but I did a few when I was just
starting out... mostly because I could! Speaking for myself... the
cool thing was that when you listened to it, there weren't issues
about inappropriate rooms, out of tune guitars or bad vocals. After a
day of working with an amateur band whose song wasn't going to sound
much better no matter what I did - especially because *I* was an
amateur, too - it made me feel better to record a thunderstorm, listen
to it and say, "Yeah... that's what it sounded like."

Come to think of it... I did some a couple of years ago. My wife
spent summers at her grandparent's lakeshore home, and has a thing
about hearing the water lapping against the shore when she awakens.
We spent a weekend at a lakeside resort, and at her behest I attempted
a recording of same... with some vague idea of making a CD she could
play in a bedside clock radio. Too much human (power boats in the
distance... even at midnight) and not enough nature - but it made her
happy that I tried. Finally bought her one of those big indoor
fountains for her birthday.

Reminds me of one of the funniest Johnny Carson bits I ever saw. He
set it up by saying that researchers at some university made
recordings to test the old saw, "If a tree falls in the forest and no
one is there to hear it... does it make a sound?" He produced a
cassette player, put it on his desk and pressed Play. Silence. More
silence. Carson raised his eyebrows. Silence. More silence.
Finally... in the back of the audience, someone yelled out, "I've
fallen and I can't get up!"

I never could decide if the audience member was a plant, or if the
writers thought they'd just set it up and let the studio audience
write the punchline... but it was hysterical!

[John Smith[_2_]]

Mike Rivers wrote:
It seems that at least once every couple of weeks someone wants to
"record nature sounds" and is asking about a suitable recorder or
microphone. Will a dozen or so of you please explain the fascination
with this to me? What do you record and what do you do with the
recordings?

This is not a simple thing to do if you want accuracy, so I'm assuming
that either you want a natural sound (at a natural volume level) to
use as a sound effect or ambient background, or you want to make
something grotesque out of the sound, perhaps by amplifying it greatly
(making the bumblebee sound as loud as the lead guitar in a mix) or
distort or pitch-shift it.

Or do we have some legitimate naturalists who are indeed collecting
natural sounds for reference or research?

Educate me.


Interesting question, Mike.

I am thinking of doing this because I want nature sounds like water,
rain, wind in the trees, etc to relax to. Now I am aware that there are
all kinds of CD's out there I can buy but they all seem to have new age
music mixed in with the nature sound and are far from relaxing to me. I
have no interest in recording technical sounds, I will leave that to the
scholars. This would be strictly hobby stuff, with no intention of
selling it. Of course if someone was to beat a path to my door...

So that is the why, the how is with analog tape and spaced omni's. Then
mixed down to a CD. (An aside to another poster, sure almost any place
you do this there are going to be human made noises, it is going to
require lots of editing.)

I have the recorder but am still looking for the best mic's for that.
Figure they need to be relatively cheap ($100 each), sensitive, rugged,
dynamic or battery powered condenser. It seems that both omnidirectional
and self powered microphones are as out of style as analog cassette
recorders these day and it is hard to find what I think I need. At the
moment my toss up choice seem both to be Audio Technica, either their
AT804 dynamic, or ATM10A condenser. But not having used either of them I
am not sure how the trade offs work out. The old Marantz stereo cassette
recorder is reasonably flat from 30-16000, so the condenser seems to
match better and it is a bit more sensitive, but the dynamic is, I
expect, more rugged and the natural roll off may sound better.
Unfortunately there is no place local to check them out, so it feels
like buying a pig in a poke.

Whoops, looks like I am one of those you are asking about, huh?

[[email protected]]

I've done this two times. The first was not "nature" sounds per se, but
ambient city sounds in small towns that I visited in Italy. I wanted
some sounds to go with the pictures I was taking, to build a more
complete sense of the experience.

More recently, I became briefly interested with recording the ocean.
I had bought a CD of ocean sounds, and it was so poorly done that I
wondered if I could make a better one. As I thought about it, it was
obvious that this wouldn't be all that easy. You need a secluded
stretch on a windless day, without the sound of car traffic and
people noise - and without some den of seagulls blathering on the
shore (a few birds in the distance is nice though).

I did end up having an opportunity to get about 15 minutes of excellent
ocean sounds with a binaural setup (mics in my ears) one evening on a
relatively secluded stretch of beach at the southern edge of the lost
coast highway. I found an odd 4-foot high lip of shore on which I could
sit very close to the water, but was also able to keep dry. The recording
came out terrific - people who listen to it on headphones either say
it is amazing or frightening... not just like you're on the beach, but
like you're in the ocean.

The efforts that I am most impressed by are the folks who capture
bird sounds. Now there's a worthwhile challenge.


Mike Rivers wrote:
: It seems that at least once every couple of weeks someone wants to
: "record nature sounds" and is asking about a suitable recorder or
: microphone. Will a dozen or so of you please explain the fascination
: with this to me? What do you record and what do you do with the
: recordings?

: This is not a simple thing to do if you want accuracy, so I'm assuming
: that either you want a natural sound (at a natural volume level) to
: use as a sound effect or ambient background, or you want to make
: something grotesque out of the sound, perhaps by amplifying it greatly
: (making the bumblebee sound as loud as the lead guitar in a mix) or
: distort or pitch-shift it.

: Or do we have some legitimate naturalists who are indeed collecting
: natural sounds for reference or research?

: Educate me.

[Don Pearce]

On 17 Mar 2007 07:00:11 -0700, "Mike Rivers"
wrote:

On Mar 17, 7:47 am, (Don Pearce) wrote:

You record what you want to record.
You don't answer to anybody else for your choice.

Don, you seem like a smart guy. Why are you such an asshole some
times? Or do you have a "forger" too?

(Yes, I wanted to answer you)


What's the problem with that answer? No forger. The guy asks why
somebody would want to record nature sounds? Because they do - that is
all the answer he needs.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[Mike Rivers]

On Mar 17, 1:55 pm, (Don Pearce) wrote:

What's the problem with that answer? No forger. The guy asks why
somebody would want to record nature sounds? Because they do - that is
all the answer he needs.

I know you have a tendency to interpret questions literally sometimes,
though I did ask specifically what people recorded and what they used
the recordings for.

If you don't record such sounds, then you don't have anything relevant
to contribute.

[Mike Rivers]

On Mar 17, 1:28 pm, John Smith wrote:
I am thinking of doing this because I want nature sounds like water,
rain, wind in the trees, etc to relax to.

I've seen this before. I wonder if it really works.

I have the recorder but am still looking for the best mic's for that.
Figure they need to be relatively cheap ($100 each), sensitive, rugged,
dynamic or battery powered condenser. It seems that both omnidirectional
and self powered microphones are as out of style as analog cassette
recorders these day and it is hard to find what I think I need.

The thing that confounds most people when they try to make recordings
like this is that they don't realize just how quiet the source is. And
perhaps they don't realize that it needs to be played back at a low
level in order not to scare the bejesus out of you. But they try to
record it at the same (digital) level as a snare drum. That doesn't
work.

I would think that for the purpose of relaxation, there's no need to
record in stereo. Since you're not recording in a reverberant field, a
tight directivity pattern isn't necessary, and no directivity pattern
is going to give you significant rejection of passing automobiles or
lawnmowers. So I'd look for a decent omni mic. An EV 635 would
probably do the trick. You don't need particularly high sensitivity if
you accept a low recording level. Crank it up when recording and
you'll only have to crank it down on playback.

[Mike Rivers]

On Mar 17, 1:45 pm, wrote:
I've done this two times. The first was not "nature" sounds per se, but
ambient city sounds in small towns that I visited in Italy. I wanted
some sounds to go with the pictures I was taking, to build a more
complete sense of the experience.

That makes sense to me. Those sounds tend to be louder than babbling
brooks, birds, and bees, so the signal-to-noise ratio is better, both
electrically and acoustically. That puts less of a technical
requirement on your system. You could probably pretty much point and
shoot. Or clip a microphone to your hat and record what you're
photographing.

More recently, I became briefly interested with recording the ocean.
I had bought a CD of ocean sounds, and it was so poorly done that I
wondered if I could make a better one. As I thought about it, it was
obvious that this wouldn't be all that easy. You need a secluded
stretch on a windless day, without the sound of car traffic and
people noise - and without some den of seagulls blathering on the
shore (a few birds in the distance is nice though).

I did end up having an opportunity to get about 15 minutes of excellent
ocean sounds with a binaural setup (mics in my ears) one evening on a
relatively secluded stretch of beach at the southern edge of the lost
coast highway.

When you get into this stuff, while I'm sure that every stretch of
seashore is different, and it's different at different times of the
day and under different weather conditions, the changes aren't very
rapid. If you had recorded for an hour, would that have been better?
Or (assuming you wanted a full CDs worth of surf) could you make a
good production by copying and pasting portions of your 15 minute
recording together? Is it random enough so that your brain wouldn't
tell you that you had heard that wave before?

[[email protected]]

On Mar 17, 7:34 am, "Mike Rivers" wrote:
It seems that at least once every couple of weeks someone wants to
"record nature sounds" and is asking about a suitable recorder or
microphone. Will a dozen or so of you please explain the fascination
with this to me? What do you record and what do you do with the
recordings?
....
Educate me.


Musique concrète

[John Smith[_2_]]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On Mar 17, 1:28 pm, John Smith wrote:
I am thinking of doing this because I want nature sounds like water,
rain, wind in the trees, etc to relax to.

I've seen this before. I wonder if it really works.

Relaxing sound? Or the technique?


I have the recorder but am still looking for the best mic's for that.
Figure they need to be relatively cheap ($100 each), sensitive, rugged,
dynamic or battery powered condenser. It seems that both omnidirectional
and self powered microphones are as out of style as analog cassette
recorders these day and it is hard to find what I think I need.

The thing that confounds most people when they try to make recordings
like this is that they don't realize just how quiet the source is. And
perhaps they don't realize that it needs to be played back at a low
level in order not to scare the bejesus out of you. But they try to
record it at the same (digital) level as a snare drum. That doesn't
work.

I realize just what level of sound I am wanting to record, and the soft
playback levels. That is part of the reason I want to do this myself,
you are correct, going by most of what I have heard. The need for high
sensitivity is simply to get the best overall s/n ratio possible in the
situation. The old Marantz is designed for dynamic mic's and has a
half-way decent preamp (some would say that half-decent is all it is),
unlike most of the digital stuff I have seen.


I would think that for the purpose of relaxation, there's no need to
record in stereo. Since you're not recording in a reverberant field, a
tight directivity pattern isn't necessary, and no directivity pattern
is going to give you significant rejection of passing automobiles or
lawnmowers. So I'd look for a decent omni mic. An EV 635 would
probably do the trick. You don't need particularly high sensitivity if
you accept a low recording level. Crank it up when recording and
you'll only have to crank it down on playback.

The chosen technique is because I like the sound that comes from spaced
omni stereo, and analog recording. That is simple personal preference. I
do have a pair of cardioids but the various mic'ing techniques with them
do not give the results I am seeking.

Both mic's I mentioned have spec's that say they are more sensitive and
have quite a bit wider range than a 635a (A excellent voice mic I am
familiar with, in fact I just sold one on eBay a couple of months ago),
but spec's and real world performance are not the same thing. I was kind
of hoping that someone who had that real world experience with them, and
similar mic's, could give me an idea how well they might work for me.

Please do not take the above as any kind of put down, Mike. I appreciate
your considered answer. My intention is only to clarify my initial
position. Also note that I intend to use the mic's, and the recording
technique, for more than just nature sounds, but that was not relevant
to your question.

[Mike Rivers]

On Mar 17, 8:06 pm, VainGlorious
wrote:

It's a big world, Mike. Not everyone wants to coop up in a studio and
slave away at multi-channel music recordings.

Oh, I'm aware of the commercial possibilities. But the questions I see
posted here are phrased very much on the hobbyist level, and I'm just
curious as to what they're actually using these sounds for. Study and
science is one thing, but putting them into a project that they (and
hopefully others) will enjoy listening to can be an interesting
creative effort.

[Les Cargill]

Mike Rivers wrote:

On Mar 17, 1:28 pm, John Smith wrote:

I am thinking of doing this because I want nature sounds like water,
rain, wind in the trees, etc to relax to.


I've seen this before. I wonder if it really works.


I have the recorder but am still looking for the best mic's for that.
Figure they need to be relatively cheap ($100 each), sensitive, rugged,
dynamic or battery powered condenser. It seems that both omnidirectional
and self powered microphones are as out of style as analog cassette
recorders these day and it is hard to find what I think I need.


The thing that confounds most people when they try to make recordings
like this is that they don't realize just how quiet the source is. And
perhaps they don't realize that it needs to be played back at a low
level in order not to scare the bejesus out of you. But they try to
record it at the same (digital) level as a snare drum. That doesn't
work.

I would think that for the purpose of relaxation, there's no need to
record in stereo. Since you're not recording in a reverberant field, a
tight directivity pattern isn't necessary, and no directivity pattern
is going to give you significant rejection of passing automobiles or
lawnmowers. So I'd look for a decent omni mic. An EV 635 would
probably do the trick. You don't need particularly high sensitivity if
you accept a low recording level. Crank it up when recording and
you'll only have to crank it down on playback.



I have done experiments with kinda-sorta parabolic mixing bowls as a
"lens", and once you tune the modes out it still sounds godawful.

The sort of nature sounds we see on cable are usually foleys. Some
documentary programs really do use remote sound, but that's an activity
only fit for former Marine snipers. Hats of to those who can. I
am pretty sure the "Cloud" DVD is not foleys, and it's one monstrous
unit of work.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/cloud/

--
Les Cargill

[VainGlorious]

On 17 Mar 2007 11:07:35 -0700, "Mike Rivers"
wrote:

On Mar 17, 1:55 pm, (Don Pearce) wrote:

What's the problem with that answer? No forger. The guy asks why
somebody would want to record nature sounds? Because they do - that is
all the answer he needs.

I know you have a tendency to interpret questions literally sometimes,
though I did ask specifically what people recorded and what they used
the recordings for.

If you don't record such sounds, then you don't have anything relevant
to contribute.

I'll bite.

There as many reasons for field recording nature as there are natural
wonders to record. I have many clients who record bird calls and
songs. They are avid birders and want high-quality captures of birds
in the field. I also have a client (a marine biologist) who wants to
capture pinniped sounds. For this, he needs a multi-unit synchronized
capture from ocean buoys activated by motion sensors. Hopefully, his
system is working. I haven't heard back from him. Another guy is a
Canadian making his own wildlife documentaries. His DV cams don't have
great audio, so he uses discrete field recorders instead.

There are other folks who like to capture pretty much everything and
anything. They want field captures for foley work, for sampling or to
sell to audio library developers. One of them is Thurston Moore of
Sonic Youth, who likes to record the "wildlife" of New York City.

It's a big world, Mike. Not everyone wants to coop up in a studio and
slave away at multi-channel music recordings. Maybe you should go
outside more often. Open your ears. You'll be amazed.

- TR
- trying to develop a butt-mic so I can have a level-on auto-capture
of farts for winning FOTD on farts.com.

[[email protected]]

On Mar 17, 7:34 am, "Mike Rivers" wrote:
It seems that at least once every couple of weeks someone wants to
"record nature sounds" and is asking about a suitable recorder or
microphone. Will a dozen or so of you please explain the fascination
with this to me? What do you record and what do you do with the
recordings?

This is not a simple thing to do if you want accuracy, so I'm assuming
that either you want a natural sound (at a natural volume level) to
use as a sound effect or ambient background, or you want to make
something grotesque out of the sound, perhaps by amplifying it greatly
(making the bumblebee sound as loud as the lead guitar in a mix) or
distort or pitch-shift it.

Or do we have some legitimate naturalists who are indeed collecting
natural sounds for reference or research?

Educate me.

I haven't tried it myself but I did ask for background nature sounds
for a studio project once. I wanted the sounds of the river and birds
to set a mood. It didn't quite turn out the way I had envisioned
because we had to resort to tricks like adding river sounds, looping,
adding bird sounds, looping. I would have rather the sounds be
naturally mingled and without looping in hindsight, but that wasn't an
option then.

I have been considering trying it myself now for the same reasons and
also just because I love being out in nature and it seems like a fun
thing to try. Also recording out in nature is something I want to try
eventually. I sort of attempted it but gave up after I found I
couldn't deal with the wind problems with the equipment I had. The
only problem is you'd need special equipment for outdoor recording due
to wind. Also, you have to wait for the appropriate conditions. But
maybe one day, it would be nice to try.

Anyone know a good archive of nature sounds free for use by the way?

[Dave Morrison]

Here's one guy who's made a living at it for quite a while:
http://www.wildsanctuary.com/

dave


"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Mar 17, 8:06 pm, VainGlorious
wrote:

It's a big world, Mike. Not everyone wants to coop up in a studio and
slave away at multi-channel music recordings.

Oh, I'm aware of the commercial possibilities. But the questions I see
posted here are phrased very much on the hobbyist level, and I'm just
curious as to what they're actually using these sounds for. Study and
science is one thing, but putting them into a project that they (and
hopefully others) will enjoy listening to can be an interesting
creative effort.

[Marc Heusser]

In article ,
John Smith wrote:
....
So that is the why, the how is with analog tape and spaced omni's. Then
mixed down to a CD. (An aside to another poster, sure almost any place
you do this there are going to be human made noises, it is going to
require lots of editing.)

I have the recorder but am still looking for the best mic's for that.
Figure they need to be relatively cheap ($100 each), sensitive, rugged,
dynamic or battery powered condenser. It seems that both omnidirectional
and self powered microphones are as out of style as analog cassette
recorders these day and it is hard to find what I think I need....

Most likely a tape recorder adds too much noise by nowadays standards.
Digital recorders are quiter.

But try a local bird observation group - they usually try to catch bird
calls and this is not easy.

I'd probably try with my Marantz PMD-670 (now 671 etc) and a Sennheiser
K6/ME64 (they can be battery powered ... the PMD-670 has phantom power
though). Also there are shotguns like the ME67 but you'd have to test
whether this actually gives better results. I would guess that parabolic
sound mirrors would help too.
But as I said: the local bird conservation group might have better tips
yet.
And as with photgraphs: the right time and location goes a long way.

HTH

Marc

--
Switzerland/Europe
http://www.heusser.com
remove CHEERS and from MERCIAL to get valid e-mail

[Arny Krueger]

"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message



The use of a cassette recorder puts a rather severe
cap on the quality level, and makes your refined search
for microphones a bit irrelevant. Take a tech leap with
this gadget:

http://homerecording.about.com:80/od..._h2_review.htm

I just bought a Microtrack, and were I to want to go out and record nature,
that would be my first choice:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_u...2496-main.html

The only question is whether the device has adequate
protection from wind. Wind-rigs, zeppelins, muffs, or
both, are frequently vital to avoid wind noise.

I'm not worried about the recorder and wind, but I surely would be worried
about the mics and wind.

Dynamic microphones are not useful for this application.
Ambient recording benefits from very sensitive mikes.
Some have been particularly pleased with the Rode NT-1A,
for this very reason.

Yes, I'd pick my NT1A s as my first choice. Maybe some of those fuzzy wind
socks that the video guys like would help.

http://www.unipv.it/webcib/res_soundscapes_uk.html

I wonder if anybody has tried a NT1A in a parabolic reflector...

[RDOGuy]

On Mar 18, 5:35 am, "Arny Krueger" wrote:

I wonder if anybody has tried a NT1A in a parabolic reflector...

The two parabolic reflectors I've had in my hands over the years
required omnidirectional mics. Isn't the NT1-A a cardioid-only
design? Seems that most also need a pretty small mic - neither of the
ones I've used would have been able to physically accomodate an NT1-A.

[Scott Dorsey]

RDOGuy wrote:
On Mar 18, 5:35 am, "Arny Krueger" wrote:

I wonder if anybody has tried a NT1A in a parabolic reflector...

The two parabolic reflectors I've had in my hands over the years
required omnidirectional mics. Isn't the NT1-A a cardioid-only
design? Seems that most also need a pretty small mic - neither of the
ones I've used would have been able to physically accomodate an NT1-A.

You can use a cardioid in a parabolic reflector. It won't have any advantage
over an omni, and of course it will have poorer impulse response than a
comparable omni and cost more, but when you consider how screwed up the
response of the system gets with the reflector anyway, it doesn't really matter.
--scott



--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Richard Crowley]

"Arny Krueger" wrote ...
I wonder if anybody has tried a NT1A in a parabolic reflector...

You would need a pretty significant kludge to get it positioned
properly, and a reasonably large diameter reflector just to
accomodate the size. Not clear whether the large diameter
capsule would be an advantage or a disadvantage in an
application where the sound is "focused" at a single point.

Parabolic reflectors are so lousy sounding, I'd be more tempted
to use a disposable 82-cent electret capsule rather than subjecting
something like an NT1A to that kind of abuse in the field.

[[email protected]]

Mike Rivers wrote:
: When you get into this stuff, while I'm sure that every stretch of
: seashore is different, and it's different at different times of the
: day and under different weather conditions, the changes aren't very
: rapid. If you had recorded for an hour, would that have been better?
: Or (assuming you wanted a full CDs worth of surf) could you make a
: good production by copying and pasting portions of your 15 minute
: recording together? Is it random enough so that your brain wouldn't
: tell you that you had heard that wave before?

I've been wondering that, but I haven't yet tried to put my ocean
sound into a loop.

The "lousy" ocean CD I bought was clearly looped, like every 15 seconds!
And the creator didn't even try to blend the splices. Unbelievable!
It is one of the few CDs I brought back and asked for a refund.

Scott

[Richard Crowley]

wrote ...
Mike Rivers wrote:
: When you get into this stuff, while I'm sure that every stretch of
: seashore is different, and it's different at different times of the
: day and under different weather conditions, the changes aren't very
: rapid. If you had recorded for an hour, would that have been better?
: Or (assuming you wanted a full CDs worth of surf) could you make a
: good production by copying and pasting portions of your 15 minute
: recording together? Is it random enough so that your brain wouldn't
: tell you that you had heard that wave before?

I've been wondering that, but I haven't yet tried to put my ocean
sound into a loop.

The "lousy" ocean CD I bought was clearly looped, like every 15
seconds!
And the creator didn't even try to blend the splices. Unbelievable!
It is one of the few CDs I brought back and asked for a refund.

Maybe somebody who lives at the beach with a broadband
connection can sell subscriptions to live web-casts of ocean
sounds. :-)

Or other places, rainforests, street-corner in Paris, etc.
If people can do "webcams" why not "webmics"?

If I lived in such a place, I'd be tempted to try it, at least just
for grins, or for publicity. But I doubt anybody wants to
hear my suburban residential subdivision. The only thing
of any note to hear is the fire station a mile away, or the
Blue Angels that loop around over my neighborhood at
low altitude during the Air Show. Oh, and the steam-
engine that makes a run occassionally on the tracks a
mile south of me.

[Arny Krueger]

"RDOGuy" wrote in message
ups.com
On Mar 18, 5:35 am, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

I wonder if anybody has tried a NT1A in a parabolic
reflector...

The two parabolic reflectors I've had in my hands over
the years required omnidirectional mics.

I can see why, but is it an iron-clad rule?

Isn't the NT1-A a cardioid-only design?

Yep.

Seems that most also need a
pretty small mic - neither of the ones I've used would
have been able to physically accomodate an NT1-A.

I guess I'm thinking about a full-range pickup. A lot of what's out there
seems to be oriented towards bird calls, not moose snorts.

[Arny Krueger]

"Richard Crowley" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote ...
I wonder if anybody has tried a NT1A in a parabolic
reflector...

You would need a pretty significant kludge to get it
positioned properly,

I don't know about that. The front of the diaphragm of cardiods seems to be
pretty well defined.

and a reasonably large diameter
reflector just to accomodate the size.

The reflector would also need to be large to have low frequency response.


Not clear whether the large diameter capsule would be an advantage or a
disadvantage in an
application where the sound is "focused" at a single
point.

Usually, the focus point has less than laser-like coherence.

Parabolic reflectors are so lousy sounding, I'd be more tempted to use a
disposable 82-cent electret capsule rather than
subjecting something like an NT1A to that kind of abuse
in the field.

I'm thinking about the noise issue. The 82 cent electrets aren't the
quietest things around.

[Scott Dorsey]

Arny Krueger wrote:

I guess I'm thinking about a full-range pickup. A lot of what's out there
seems to be oriented towards bird calls, not moose snorts.

If you want a full-range pickup, you don't want a parabolic dish.

If you want to be down in the moose snort range, you need a focal point
around 20 meters, which means a dish around 40 meters for useful
directionality. And even then the response plot is going to look like the
Swiss Alps. A 40 meter dish is not readily portable.

As a result, parabolic dishes are only used for high frequency applications
where the massive comb filtering is tolerable. Like birdsong.

Watch a football game where they use one to pick up calls... and notice
how it makes telephone fidelity seem good in comparison.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Mike Rivers]

On Mar 18, 1:23 pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

If you want a full-range pickup, you don't want a parabolic dish.

How are those multi-channel mics with DSP like what Audio Technica and
Gefell make? They're supposed to have very sharp directivity and
pretty good fidelity. That's what you need to shoot a bird, but
probably not to shoot the surf.

[Scott Dorsey]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On Mar 18, 1:23 pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

If you want a full-range pickup, you don't want a parabolic dish.

How are those multi-channel mics with DSP like what Audio Technica and
Gefell make? They're supposed to have very sharp directivity and
pretty good fidelity. That's what you need to shoot a bird, but
probably not to shoot the surf.

They actually don't have very sharp directivity.... they have sharp
nulls. Very good for killing one source in a soundfield, not so good
for much other things. And in the case of the A-T it's specifically
set up to eliminate things like birdsong and other narrowband signals
as the algorithm inside the DSP is designed for improved voice quality.

Something like the Schoeps shotgun (which is not a real shotgun, just
a very tight hypercardioid with an interference tube on the front) is
a good compromise between sound quality and directionality for field
recording under noisy conditions. Still restricted directionality on
the low end, of course.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Richard Kuschel]

On Mar 17, 4:34 am, "Mike Rivers" wrote:
It seems that at least once every couple of weeks someone wants to
"record nature sounds" and is asking about a suitable recorder or
microphone. Will a dozen or so of you please explain the fascination
with this to me? What do you record and what do you do with the
recordings?

This is not a simple thing to do if you want accuracy, so I'm assuming
that either you want a natural sound (at a natural volume level) to
use as a sound effect or ambient background, or you want to make
something grotesque out of the sound, perhaps by amplifying it greatly
(making the bumblebee sound as loud as the lead guitar in a mix) or
distort or pitch-shift it.

Or do we have some legitimate naturalists who are indeed collecting
natural sounds for reference or research?

Educate me.

Good nature samples are absolutely useful in providing backgrounds for
both audio and video post production.
The problem is that these sounds are very quiet and require the best
equipment available to get realistic recordings.

IMHO, This usually means equipment that tends to be rather expensive.
There are a lot of recorders out there that are not terribly expensive
can record well, but the mic preamps are usually pieces of noisy crap.
One exception is the Sound Devices series of recorders. DEVA and
others are also good but really a lot of money.

If you are using a machine such as the Marantz 670 or 671, you will
want to buy a decent battery operated preamp and these are not
inexpensive.

On top of that, you will need an arsenal of very high quality
microphones. Schoeps are my favorites, but I have some Neumanns that
also fill the bill. I also take a pair of Shure SM81's as backups.
They aren't as clean or good sounding as the Neumann or Schoeps
models, but I have been is some high humidity situations in which only
the Shures would work. Caves, swamps at night etc.

Don't forget the Rycotes either. Windjammers and "dead cats" are a
necessity. With time and ingenuity, you can build workable
substitutes.

Now that you have all this stuff, you are going to spend many hours
getting even a few minutes of usable ambiance. Travel to locations
and having takes ruined by traffic, airplanes and wind all take their
toll and add to the overall time involved.

It seems a lot of work, but I like the results better than listening
to Sound Ideas track #29 from their library disc 6029 for every
outdoor scene from a California scene to Panda bears in China. This is
not a slam on the Sound Ideas Library, but some discretion should be
used by producers and editors.

Sometimes sound backgrounds can be over used. I am disturbed by WWI
and WWII documentary footage with battle sounds added when there was
no audio recording available at the time. A B-17 plane five miles up
makes a bombing run and the bomb sounds occur at the same time the
bomb hits the ground. This is overproduction and misleading. In all
likelihood, the explosions were never heard from the aircraft, as the
aircraft would be seven or eight miles from the impact site before the
sound could catch up to the airplane and those sounds would be covered
by the engines.

In a movie, not a documentary, of course, nothing is being portrayed
as fact and SFX are part of the enjoyment.

[Don Pearce]

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 08:25:18 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"Arny Krueger" wrote ...
I wonder if anybody has tried a NT1A in a parabolic reflector...

You would need a pretty significant kludge to get it positioned
properly, and a reasonably large diameter reflector just to
accomodate the size. Not clear whether the large diameter
capsule would be an advantage or a disadvantage in an
application where the sound is "focused" at a single point.

Parabolic reflectors are so lousy sounding, I'd be more tempted
to use a disposable 82-cent electret capsule rather than subjecting
something like an NT1A to that kind of abuse in the field.

The big problem with the parabolic reflector is that it inevitably has
a 6dB/octave rising response with frequency. That makes it great for
bird calls, but not much use for anything else. Of course you can eq
the rise out, but that loses you a hell of a lot of top end signal.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[[email protected]]

On Mar 18, 12:09 pm, "Richard Crowley" wrote:

... street-corner in Paris ...
If I lived in such a place,

it was great fun collecting the street sounds for Musique concrète,
it felt like Pierre Schaeffer was standing at my side...

[John Smith[_2_]]

wrote:
Mike Rivers wrote:
: When you get into this stuff, while I'm sure that every stretch of
: seashore is different, and it's different at different times of the
: day and under different weather conditions, the changes aren't very
: rapid. If you had recorded for an hour, would that have been better?
: Or (assuming you wanted a full CDs worth of surf) could you make a
: good production by copying and pasting portions of your 15 minute
: recording together? Is it random enough so that your brain wouldn't
: tell you that you had heard that wave before?

I've been wondering that, but I haven't yet tried to put my ocean
sound into a loop.

The "lousy" ocean CD I bought was clearly looped, like every 15 seconds!
And the creator didn't even try to blend the splices. Unbelievable!
It is one of the few CDs I brought back and asked for a refund.

Scott


It can be done fairly well, I have a CD of rain noise I made up from
short sound clips. I chopped them into random length bits, put them
together to make up an hour long piece, mixed two different such rain
tracks (the two tracks are intended to cover the splices in each other),
added a river track at about 25%, and a low level (5%) of background
black noise. The intention was to make a track that sounds like you are
sitting on the porch of a bungalow by the river listening to the rain
and the low roar of the swollen river. The result is better than what I
have bought in stores, but not quite up to what I would like it to be,
still a bit too repetitive. However the project did get me interested in
trying to do it from scratch.

[Richard Crowley]

"Arny Krueger" wrote ...
"Richard Crowley" wrote
"Arny Krueger" wrote ...
I wonder if anybody has tried a NT1A in a parabolic
reflector...

You would need a pretty significant kludge to get it
positioned properly,

I don't know about that. The front of the diaphragm of cardiods seems
to be pretty well defined.

But the manner of attching the microphone is designed
more for horizontal "pencil mics" than for big vertical
"can mics".

And, of course, the whole matter of using a cardioid
in this application is another issue which Scott mentioned.


and a reasonably large diameter
reflector just to accomodate the size.

The reflector would also need to be large to have low frequency
response.

As Scott also mentioned, reflectors for ANY kind of LF
response are completely unreasonable in size.

Not clear whether the large diameter capsule would be an advantage
or a disadvantage in an application where the sound is "focused" at a
single point.

Usually, the focus point has less than laser-like coherence.

Which was why I used quotes around "focused".

I'm thinking about the noise issue. The 82 cent electrets aren't the
quietest things around.

True, but if you are so far away that you are using a
parabolic reflector, the ambient noise will likely swamp
out the self-noise of a cheap electret element. Even if you
aren't in a swamp. :-)

[hank alrich]

Mike Rivers wrote:

It seems that at least once every couple of weeks someone wants to
"record nature sounds" and is asking about a suitable recorder or
microphone. Will a dozen or so of you please explain the fascination
with this to me? What do you record and what do you do with the
recordings?

This is not a simple thing to do if you want accuracy, so I'm assuming
that either you want a natural sound (at a natural volume level) to
use as a sound effect or ambient background, or you want to make
something grotesque out of the sound, perhaps by amplifying it greatly
(making the bumblebee sound as loud as the lead guitar in a mix) or
distort or pitch-shift it.

Or do we have some legitimate naturalists who are indeed collecting
natural sounds for reference or research?

Educate me.

I have an acquaintance who records lots of low level natural sounds -
flying critters, all kinds of water and wind sounds, grass and leaves,
and more - as sources to mangle for her compositions. She mixes such
sounds, usually post-mangling, into her more typical musical works, but
certainly in what we would term an avant garde genre. I found her stuff
quite engaging.

--
ha
Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam

[Tracy Wintermute]

On 17 Mar 2007 04:34:15 -0700, "Mike Rivers"
wrote:

It seems that at least once every couple of weeks someone wants to
"record nature sounds" and is asking about a suitable recorder or
microphone. Will a dozen or so of you please explain the fascination
with this to me? What do you record and what do you do with the
recordings?

Educate me.

I don't know if I'll educate you, but I'll try to answer a couple of
the questions that you actually asked:

The first personal example that I recall was back in the late
70s/early 80s, or thereabouts. My songwriting partner and myself had
composed a somewhat politically charged tune concerning events in
Central America. We had planned to end the tune with the chorus hook
repeating ad nauseum into a fade out. One day, when I was about done
mixing and practicing the fade (does anyone remember rehearsing mixes
prior to performing them?) it hit me; I thought it would be cool to
crossfade into a simulation of hiding in the jungle (the kids refer to
that as a 'rainforest' nowadays) near a back roadway at night, while
troops went marching by. The idea was not to present technical
accuracy, but to invoke a mental image. Soooo, I needed to come up
with a marching simulation, and night time jungle noises... ie, lots
of bugs. (It's not like anyone in Panama was gonna hear it, and say
"that doesn't sound right".)

On a particularly warm and humid night, I recorded about 5 minutes of
the night critters here in stereo. Later, on another track, I recorded
marching sounds (another whole topic there), and to make it as hokey
as possible I added 'troops' whistling on yet another track, such as
heard in 'Bridge on the River Kwai'. (No, I made up a different
melody.)

So, as the hook was fading out, the bugs/marching/whistling faded in,
then the marching/whistling faded out (as though the troops had gone
on by), leaving you in the jungle alone with the bugs, which
themselves then faded out. Probably not the best description, but at
least _I_ know what I meant...
Since then, I've recorded other ambient sounds for potential similar
use. There was a guy asking about frogs a while back, and I explained
my rather simplistic setup.

Then there was this;
A few years back when the 17 year cicadas were making sweet love, I
recorded several minutes in mono with a 57. Those things (cicadas) are
near deafening here. I dumped a couple of seconds of that into a
sampling module, and used a midi keyboard to play an obscure sounding
lead.

So there you have it, not really a fascination or anything... I'm just
a weirdo.


====================
Tracy Wintermute

Rushcreek Ranch
====================

[Mike Rivers]

On Mar 19, 3:53 am, Tracy Wintermute wrote:

I don't know if I'll educate you, but I'll try to answer a couple of
the questions that you actually asked:

Thanks. That was quite a project. Sound design in music can be very
creative and add interest to a song - gives the listener something
easier to remember about your song than the lyrics, but it's not
distracting.

So, did you agonize over microphones and low recording levels? That's
the question within the question I asked. What triggered it was that
people seem concerned that there will be something technically wrong
with their nature recording before they even try it, or try using
whatever recording they're able to make with the equipment they have.

Of course, like anything else in this business, it's always possible
to do something better. But when your goal is to use a sound to convey
the IDEA of location or environment, you don't always need to start
with a pristine recording, and, in fact, if you had one, you would
probably find yourself at least limiting the bandwidth and mixing it
down at a low level so it doesn't take over. It's like taking the
midrange out of a guitar track so that it doesn't get in the way of
the keyboard or vocal.

A few years back when the 17 year cicadas were making sweet love, I
recorded several minutes in mono with a 57. Those things (cicadas) are
near deafening here.

I set up my Studio Projects LSD2 (stereo mic) on my back porch and
recorded the buggers. The passing traffic and lawn mowers gave a
perspective of how loud the cicadas really were. Without that
"interference" as a reference, the volume of the playback would be
arbitrary. But you wouldn't want that as part of your "rain forest"
effect.