it's difficult to get a (dunno the right term for this) clean ambient recording. Airplanes and changing traffic sounds makes edit-ting a pane in the glass.
I still have a working dat recorder I've used, but the M-audio, and Ederol (spel gud) units make the most sence (I can highly NOT recommend the Marantz flash recorder)
My favorite mic setup was MS, and directional microphones are very useful.
Recording individual sounds of birds and the like requires fairly directional mics. I was never happy with parabolic mics for ambient (although they work great for sports) My preferred setup was a long shotgun (Sennheiser 816) coupled with a bi-directional microphone (Shoeps) or just an omni as the S part of the MS setup.
Most of my recordings were done with a Nagra (ouch.... heavy, but very quiet)
I was never happy with the results of spaced omni mics outdoors, and always preferred at least a hyper or short shotgun at the bare minimum.
Where I live wind is a major concern, with the windscreens costing almost as much as the microphones. But it's relatively easy to construct your own if needed.
Sampling the world
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deaf dunderkwac deaf dunderkwac https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=78199
- KVRAF
- 5247 posts since 15 Aug, 2005 from RainLand featuring RAinRAinRAin
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- KVRAF
- 3161 posts since 22 Dec, 2004
yeah the stock preamps on the Marantz 660 are so noisy. The edirol R4 is not much better. I haven't tried the m-audio and haven't heard much good about except the Manytone post here. Maybe the units vary or there was a problem that has been rectififed.
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- Mod-ulator
- 2895 posts since 31 Oct, 2000 from "Where I'm to, There I'll be"
Well they are not as silent as my home M Audio stuff but they are still pretty nice considering the size of the unit. It is not much bigger than a deck of cards.Genetic_Junk wrote:yeah the stock preamps on the Marantz 660 are so noisy. The edirol R4 is not much better. I haven't tried the m-audio and haven't heard much good about except the Manytone post here. Maybe the units vary or there was a problem that has been rectififed.
The 1/8 inch input with the included mic is weak but works when you want to be ultra portable and are not too fussy on the quality.
The 1/4 inch inputs are balanced if needed so you can convert a condensor mic XLR cable to them. They are quieter than the 1/8 inch inputs.
I use the AT822 Stereo X - Y Mic which has a Battery in it to power it and with that setup the recordings are very satisfactory. (This Mic is worth about the same as the MicroTrack itself) As with any sampling, sometimes some decent noise removal tools / software also come in handy to further clean up stuff / Line noise etc.
I Repeat ...sometimes we use noise removal... but a tip....never overdo Noise removal and never delete your orig files in case you hear artifacts later from the process.
So again it is not as nice as at the studio but it is nice enough for when i need a quick portable field recording. I am happy so far ... I will be posting some samples on our forum sometime.
Paul
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- KVRAF
- 3161 posts since 22 Dec, 2004
Cool, thanks for the review. Awaiting the samples. 
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- KVRAF
- 3002 posts since 24 Nov, 2003 from Heidelberg&Hamburg
I have noise and wind aplenty on about 78 CD-Rs with noises from anywhere 
. I couldn't afford more, so bought a Minidisk-Recorder, a lavalier-mic (not a good one like those mentioned here, but I'd love to have one), made myself a windshield, have a look HERE. After I had this rather cheap wind- and noise - shield, things were much easier. In fact besides many many hours of crackles noise and sssssszzzm I got many many useful sounds as well.
If you can read German, a mag called "PC&Musik" tested a few months ago the M-Audio, an Edirol-recording thingie and a MD-recorder. They ended up voting for the MD-recorder (to be got secondhand for not toooo much money), but I have forgotten why. Maybe you'd like to google for more information.
At least it's great great fun. Sometimes a VERY small use of reverb can make too noisy sounds better, but this is of course nothing the pros would do, maybe(I don't mind much, I just try things and listen to the results). For a slight noise removal there are many plugins out there, some extremely expensive and beyond my budget-range (Waves and so on), but I recently found a very interesting plugin called Extraboy pro from www.eleveyta.com. I always try not to use denoisers and so on, but then it can be an experimental tool on its own for your samples from the world
cheers, good luck,
Klemperer
. I couldn't afford more, so bought a Minidisk-Recorder, a lavalier-mic (not a good one like those mentioned here, but I'd love to have one), made myself a windshield, have a look HERE. After I had this rather cheap wind- and noise - shield, things were much easier. In fact besides many many hours of crackles noise and sssssszzzm I got many many useful sounds as well.If you can read German, a mag called "PC&Musik" tested a few months ago the M-Audio, an Edirol-recording thingie and a MD-recorder. They ended up voting for the MD-recorder (to be got secondhand for not toooo much money), but I have forgotten why. Maybe you'd like to google for more information.
At least it's great great fun. Sometimes a VERY small use of reverb can make too noisy sounds better, but this is of course nothing the pros would do, maybe(I don't mind much, I just try things and listen to the results). For a slight noise removal there are many plugins out there, some extremely expensive and beyond my budget-range (Waves and so on), but I recently found a very interesting plugin called Extraboy pro from www.eleveyta.com. I always try not to use denoisers and so on, but then it can be an experimental tool on its own for your samples from the world
cheers, good luck,
Klemperer