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greenmachine

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Posts posted by greenmachine

  1. Sorry, I have to disagree again, even at loud rock music concerts, there can be a real perception of depth, the wall of noise you're experiencing could be caused from overloading your ears, I've did some recordings at a very loud rock concert recently. While being there, it indeed sounded pretty much like a mess, but after rehearing it at home, it sounds very clear, because it's not played back at such a brutal volume anymore. All I can suggest is to protect your valuable hearing. You can listen to some samples here.

  2. My understanding of the word stereo is when the sounds are specifically mixed to give a seperation of sounds to give a perception of depth.

    perception of depth = room information

    With the way he sound at a show hits you, it has no stereo seperation-you may get certain sounds louder on one side of the room to another, but that isn't 'real' stereo.

    It's not just about differences in volume, there's also phase and other information i can't think of at the moment.

  3. I've spoken to a lot of 'Stealth' tapers who use mini disc, and they record in Mono to enable them to get  longer record time on the disc to save the (potentially life threatening!) problem of swapping discs mid show. Then then just create a stereo field from the mono source

    What an AwFuL idea! The mono signal already contains a lot of room information, echoes, coloring of the sound if you're recording in a room (what's pretty much always the case). Giving it additional artificial room information would just make a mess of the recording. It would work with a direct signal, like a voice directly into a very close microphone, or artificially created sounds from synthesizers though.

  4. I don't think the mics unplug, and as I'm not good with a soldering iron, i'm not going to attempt to pull it apart.

    An excerpt from your provided link:

    Plugable Left & Right channel Angled Pro Nickel Microphones enable extension cable use for different stereo recording situations.

    Unplug one angled microphone and use it for mono recording on both channels

    on your minidisc or laptop.

    If you can't separate them, I wouldn't destroy the construction by disassembling it, rather look for different microphones since good ones are not too expensive nowadays.

    I understand the baiscs of what/how stereo works, but I'm still rather sceptical about getting more 'stereo separation' at a gig when the noise is  coming straight at you as it does.

    It's up to you if you want a realistic, the room acoustics involving sound or just directly the noise source. For the first I'd use a binaural omnidirectional construction, for the latter a mono cardioid microphone directing straight at the source. Personally, I clearly prefer the first method for recording music.

    Surely, unless you can get a mixed stereo feed, it's always going to 'bi-aural mono'?

    What's the definition of stereo? Isn't it basically a source signal with room information?

  5. The way to get better stereo is to separate the mics further. Each of your ears gets slightly different information that lets your brain build a 3D image. If the mics are right next to each other, they're getting the same information.

    Looking at the photo, that mic tries to have some separation but is limited by its size. Getting the mics even a few more inches apart, like the width of your ears, will give a much rounder sound. If the mics unplug from that Y-connector, you could get two extension cords and run them from mics to Y-plug. Clip the mics to eyeglasses frames, a hat, your shoulders, a shirt collar, etc., and it will open up the stereo image.

    Besides from separating the microphones physically it makes a huge difference if there's an object (like your head, a dummy head, books, a carton, just about anything) between them to prevent soundwaves coming from one side hitting the microphone on the other side directly. It separates the channels even more. (Maybe someone can provide a link for a more technical explanation.)

  6. Should I record in PCM or HI-Sp. The recording will be a little over 2 hours. Should I tape in PCM and just do a disc switch after its full. or should I record in Hi-Sp and get the whole show with no cuts?

    Depends on your quality demands, I'd say the compression in SP mode is such good that it sounds almost the same, but you can try for yourself by doing a double-blind listening-test...

    The LP mode gives a significant degradation of sound quality IMHO though.

  7. running the mic  through line-in

    Good idea, it's a microphone with built-in power supply (although it's voltage of 1.5 volts might be somewhat low). It could work. Try it this way with a propably pretty high level (maybe even up to level 30).

    try getting VERY close

    I wouldn't suggest to get too close, rather look for an acoustically good spot and accept the often negligible disadvantages of a somewhat too low level.

  8. You must have a pair of headphones with you.  Headphones can work as very weak microphones. If you have time to try the experiment, why not try plugging the headphones into the mic jack with high sensitivity and probably a high manual volume level and getting close to the musicians.  It might sound awful--but then again, it might not overload, either.

    lol, what an interesting solution! How about getting farther away from the musicians using the mic?

  9. Dynamic range? I was talking about the frequency response...

    What exactly do you mean with "it is still going to struggle"?

    I don't think you will overload anything if you use the suggested battery-box-line-in configuration, at the utmost the microphones if they're not suited for extreme levels, but even some of these can be optimized, shown here, he claims they would accept far more than 130 dB with his suggested modification, which is hell of a lot, believe me; you're sooner deaf than your recording would clip...

  10. Why is a stereo Potentiometer noisy? It works as a variable resistor, a carbon track is swiped by an arm with a conductor on it's end. The carbon track can be very dirty, unsealed from environmental dust and moisture, and can wear out in less than a hundred turns. All these issues can be addressed by using a much higher quality Potentiometer.

    That's not the main reason for increased noise, basically you lower the signal from the microphone while the noise of the preamplifier stays the same -> lower Signal to Noise Ratio. Even if you have perfect contacts, the SNR will decrease.

  11. where should the peaks in recording volume reach – at the moment they are hitting the max on the level indicator.

    Ideally they should reach as high as possible without hitting the max, practically it's better to leave some headroom (lowering the level a little bit) if you don't know how loud the loudest part will be, to avoid clipping - you can normalize the recording afterwards if it's too quiet.

    I am in Australia – is there an equivalent of the “radio shack volume attenuator”  solution here?

    Instead of spending your money for a suboptimal solution (I've tried it for myself and the recording was still distorted, additionally it decreases the signal to noise ratio), why not build your own "battery box", which will supply the microphones with a higher voltage and this way allows higher sound pressure levels for the mics. It's very easy to build one yourself, you just need a condenser and a resistor for each channel - an example is shown here ... For recording very loud sounds it is suggested to use the mics with such a BB through the Line In of your recorder.

    For realistic sounding records, I'd suggest to use binaural microphones (shown on the same site). Also you may want to pay attention to the links at the bottom.

    edit:

    I just took a look at the specifications of your mic, a frequency response of 100 to 15000Hz is adequate for spoken word, but not too exciting for music (it basically means that it can't record the lowest and the highest frequencies) - the human ear can hear about 20 to 20000 Hz and there are inexpensive microphones which can pick up that whole range as well...

    Check out some samples of a recording i did a few days ago, using (pseudo-?) binaural microphones at a rather loud concert here

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