Think this is the post you were talking about.....if not, still some great info contained within, thx. QUOTE so let me get this straight: low vs. high sensitivity has a lot to do with change in dynamics rather than the loudness of the sounds around us? when you said that you were in the country with a train going 80 km/h, did this sound clip your mics or are they able to capture the train in general just not when it all of a sudden appears on the meters? Well, no. Sensitivity has to do with the efficiency of the microphone at a given SPL. A high-sensitivity mic will put out a greater signal than a low-sensitivity one. It makes sense that if your sensitivity increases, your dynamic range will as well. If the mic is more efficient but has the same self-noise, the SNR will increase accordingly, and so will the dynamic range. With my train example - no, the mics never clipped [and neither did the preamp]. Generally speaking, most mics and solid-state preamps don't suffer from problems with transients [when it all of a sudden appears on the meters]. What I was implying when I said the thing about the train was that the train [or at least, the engine] was likely louder than 105dB, in which case the high-sens mics would have distorted. Side note: if you're recording with the AGC on, -that- is when you'll have problems with those sudden attacks. This is a side-effect of AGC, not of the mics. I never record important sources, natural sources, music &c. using AGC. I almost always leave AGC turned on for recording speech, though, as it so happens that the low-sensitivity version of the SP-TFB-2s has exactly the right sensitivity for everyday sounds to fall well below the threshold of the AGC's compression, meaning the AGC only kicks in when something really loud happens. Going by the rated sensitivity of the high-sens version, everyday sounds would constantly be riding at or just below said threshold, making the AGC far more obvious. Perhaps it would help to try and explain what these mean: QUOTE Signal To Noise Ratio Low Sensitivity 58dB/High Sensitivity 62dB Open Circuit Sensitivity Low Sensitivity-42dB/High Sensitivity-35dB Maximum Input Sound Level 105dB/120dB Dynamic Range 81dB/96dB "Open circuit sensitivity" is a measurement of how much level a mic puts out for a given sound level. The current international standard usually uses a reference level of 94dB [1Pa] compared with 1V, i.e. a sensitivity of 0dB would have the microphone putting out 1V when transducing 94dB SPL; if we had mics like that, we wouldn't even need preamps! See here for a good quick reference to SNR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal-to-noise_ratio Likewise for dynamic range: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range General audio measurement terminology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_system_measurements While you're there, also check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphone and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording And, for that matter, the category itself of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Audio_engineering Note that what most companies refer to as "binaural microphones" in fact use variants of the A-B stereo mic'ing technique, and have nothing whatsoever to do with binaural recording; this is part of the reason why I don't actually like listening to many if not most recordings made this way over speakers, and most specifically the reason why I keep insisting on pointing out that most binaural mics are not even pseudo-binaural, let alone binaural. Quoted directly from the wikipedia entry on microphones: "The A-B technique uses two omnidirectional microphones at an especial distance to each other (20 centimeters up to some meters). Stereo information consists in large time-of-arrival distances and some sound level differences. On playback, with too large A-B the stereo image can be perceived as somewhat unnatural, as if the left and right channel are independent sound sources, without an even spread from left to right. A-B recordings are not so good for mono playback because the time-of-arrival differences can lead to certain frequency components being canceled out and other being amplified, the so-called comb-filtering effect, but the stereo sound can be really convincing. If you use wide A-B for big orchestras, you can fill the center with another microphone. Then you get the famous "Decca tree", which has brought us many good sounding recordings.
