Looking For New Recording Solutions

[javertim]

Okay, so I've been able to come away with some really wonderful recordings using the line-in on my recorder, and I've been doing this for a while now. Many successful recordings. However, I'm still trying to find a better way to boost the quiet areas of my recordings. As I have said in the past, I am a theatre-goer and often see musicals and such. Therefore, it is easy to notice the difficulty because there are loud areas of music mixed with soft areas of dialogue. So far, I've been using a compression tool in Audition, compressing anything under -15dB at a ratio of 2:1. For more dynamic recordings, I've actually compressed the levels OVER -15dB, too, which compresses the loud stuff softly enough for my taste.

But there had to be an easier way around this. Currently, the softest parts show one bar during recording if even that. The loudest things peak where they should and I am often lucky enough to have set the level to where the loud passages peak just below the distortion bar. Currently I'm running my CS-LCBs into a SP battery module with bass roll-off set minimally based on the theatre I'm in (I basically know my venues pretty well now). However, I notice that when I have recorded mic-in with attenuator in the past and have experienced the same range of levels without going over, the resulting recording is quite a bit louder. I don't know how to explain it. You would think that the same levels means the same volume, but this is not the case. Does anyone have and explanation for this?

In the end, I think what I really need is a mini preamp, and I have been eyeing the Reactive Sounds Boost Box for a while. Mr Soul says the self-noise is ridiculously low. I'm imagining that my current battery box set-up may introduce some of its own self noise in the process.

I may also want to look into a pair of mics with lower self-noise. For this, I've had my eye set on the SP-CMC-8s (so that later I can get different caps if need be). I am assuming that these have a much better self noise number (at 65dB) than my current CS-LCB mics.

Thanks! :-)

Edited May 24, 2005 by javertim