Location Docklands Equipment Zoom H4 Tripod Mount and Zoom H4N D112 mini tripod and R09 I finally picked up the new Zoom H4N this week, although it sat in its box for 3 days because I had no time to get it out and look at it which is really sad. It is going to take me a while to work out exactly what this thing can do but at first glance it has some very nice new features. I’m certainly not going to stop using the H4, but I expect the H4N will become my main unit fairly soon. First big difference is that it does not have the mount with Velcro straps that the H4 has. The H4N has a screw thread directly into the body so I can attach it directly to a tripod without the old mount system. I have moved the H4 mount permanently onto the tripod and the H4N will go on the Boom pole. This will reduce the amount of messing around when I want have different set-ups. The H4N also has access to the memory card directly from the side of the unit, the H4 had access hidden in with the batteries. From a functional point of view the H4N has various different modes including one that allows for input from an external microphone as well as the two on board mics simultaneously. This could be very useful for backup tracks. I’ll add a full review of the H4N to the review section very soon. Today I wanted to do some more water recordings, this time of water slashing on water so I went down to the wharfs again and took all my gear. I used the H4 on the tripod with the MKH 60, and the H4N on the ground with a D112 on a mini tripod as well as using the H4N mics with a fluffy wind cover. I also switched on the R09, but without a wind cover everything it captured was unusable. I then spent about 20 minutes dragging buckets of water out of the bay and throwing it back in to record the splash sounds. When I got back to the studio I found a lot of noise in these recordings. Each set-up seemed to have its own issues. The shotgun mic was pointing out across the harbour area and was in fact picking up construction noise from about a kilometre away. The D112 was not directional enough and so was picking up as much wind as it was splashing, and the H4N mics were positioned too low to the ground to receive anything useful. So even with 6 mics I didn’t really grab anything I want to keep. I am not worried as it is very easy to record this material again, and it was also mainly a test for the new equipment, but ti is interesting to see how even with various pieces of equipment all working together you can not always guarantee a good result. I think recording at night time would be better as the area is often heavy with construction during the day. Traffic will also be less of an issue. I was a very good test and showed various issues I need to deal with. At the same location I wanted to record some water balloons bursting. The sound of the balloons bursting with water was too quick and quite lifeless, but the popping sound when full of air was excellent. The nearby structures provided a really good reverberant echo. It sounded almost like a gunshot. So even though the sound I wanted to capture was not great I got some good sounds. I also captured the sound of one of the pontoon wharfs creaking heavily on my way back. This was probably the best sound of the day, and was completely unexpected.
I used the H4N with the D112 to record several of my sneezes when I got back to the apartment. (I have an awful cold at the moment) My sneezes have always been very loud, but it was somewhat frightening to see that a mic designed specifically to record massive output sounds struggled with my exploding head. I did get a couple of good examples, but I also got several that peaked badly. I also recorded some good domestic sounds, like brushing teeth, and lots of sniffing sounds (courtesy of my cold) I will continue to put the H4N through its paces and see what it can do.
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Docklands Equipment R09 With H3 Hydrophone I have wanted to do some more testing with the H3 since we moved into the Docklands area. I have never been happy with this mic as I just don’t think it ever worked properly. I thought I’d walk down to the water and try a few new things to see what I could capture. After remembering I didn’t have any 9volt batteries and going and buying one I walked down to one of the boat docks and set up. The H3 has a built in microphone pre amp with a volume control and a small plug for headphones. I attached a cable to the headphone socket and then to my R09. This is not the best quality in the world as a proper mic cable would be better, but its enough to see how it works. The H3 has a 3 meter cable that is attached to the mic and sealed against water. This means you can lower the mic down to three meters depth. I tried a few different places on the dock, but again the sound was very crackly. The more I used the mic the worse it got until the mic pretty much died completely. I pulled it out of the water and played around with the cable, it produced a bunch of squeak and feedback sounds, some of which I was glad I was recording as they were quite interesting, but they were not what this mic is supposed to do. I am going to contact the manufacturer and talk to them about it. I would really like to have a good mic for recording underwater, but so far this one is not it. Sometimes things just don’t work the way they are supposed to. I did capture some interesting sounds, so I’ll go through and see what’s worth keeping. Location
Melbourne Equipment R09 handheld Just a quick one today. On the way to work I passed by a store that had its security alarm going off. It was an area of the city with very little traffic so it was a good opportunity to record a sample of an alarm. So a short break on the way to work and another sound to add to the collection. Location Docklands Equipment Zoom F4 and R09 handheld I've not done too much recording lately as I have been really busy getting a lot of the documentation for the website ready. I have finally got a name I am happy with and have registered it, but if you are reading this then you already know what the name is :-). The website is still pretty much on track for a release around the middle of 2009. (How did I do, did I get it up and running on time?) Anyway Anna and I went for a long walk tonight to walk off dessert, and on the way back the big show tent near our apartment was creaking in the wind. It has giant cables that tie down the tent and the wind was strong enough to be constantly pulling on the cable tension causing heaps of noise. I got out the R09 to have it immediately shut down from flat batteries. THIS is why I carry spares. 3 minutes later I was recording a good selection of cable creaks and groans. I have heard these cables making nose before, but tonight was the best example I have heard so far so I was glad to be able to grab it, and very glad to be carrying spare batteries. Location Kew and Docklands Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Tripod mount and R09 handheld I had some nice people from the Kew Bowmans club help me this morning by shooting lots of arrows into targets for me while I was recording. Sunday morning is the regular meeting time for the club, and the head of the club Rob McKenzie had been happy for me to come along and have a listen and then he helped me out by doing some shooting for me. There was a freeway very close by which I am worried might have contaminated some of the sounds, but I should have some good material when I sort through it all. I set up the shotgun mic on the tripod so I could position it at the target to record some impact sounds. Then I progressively moved it down the range to record the arrows in flight past the mic at different ranges. Its these more subtle sounds that I think might have issues with the freeway noise. Again I learnt lots about archery in between recording shots. I captured most of the bow firing sounds with the handheld R09 as the Shotgun mic was down range. I plan to buy the new Zoom H4n when it is available in a few weeks and this will give me a third recording option. I a not sure what mic I want to use with the new unit, I will need to do some experimenting to find the best combination of devices. There isn’t really a lot of different sounds with archery. The firing of the arrow, the flight of the arrow and the impact of the arrow are basically it, but I did make sure I captured shots being fired into the tow different target types available as well as a range of three or four different bows and several different types of arrows, so there should be some good material in there when I get to catalogue it. Later in the day I tried strapping the R09 under the bonnet of the car we had hired for the weekend. It was just a little Toyota, but I thought this would be a good test of the method. I want to see how well this works for future car recordings. Strapping the unit down was pretty straightforward, but obviously I cant monitor the levels, so I wont get to see if they were good until I download all the sounds and go through them all to catalogue. I have a Nissan Z and a BMW lined up to record soon so I want to get the process working well before I record them.
Finally I also got some female footstep sounds as well. My wife helped me out by wearing a few different pairs of shoes and I followed her round recording her walking on different surfaces. The good thing about the Docklands area near where we are living is that at night its like a ghost town so it’s a great quiet area to do sound recording with no contamination. It also has a good range of surfaces for walking on because they have metal escalators, wooden slate bridges as well as the usual concrete and tile flooring. I’ve been meaning to add women’s shoes to the library for ages so its good to finally get some in there. Location Melbourne Equipment R09 hand held I’ve been waiting for a storm like today's for about 5 years. At various times over the last few years I have tried recording thunderstorms but the circumstances were never ideal. The main issue with recording thunder is that the best position to be is directly in the storms path. The low rumble sound that most people associate with thunder is the sound of distant thunder. When it occurs directly overhead it makes a loud sharp crack sound as if the sky has just been torn open. It is a sound with an incredible amount of power and another indication that we humans just can’t compete with nature when it comes to making loud bangs. Of course predicting where a storm is going to go and being in it's path ready can be a little tricky, then of course you have the issue of, if being in its path puts you in the middle of a noisy street then the sounds get contaminated. Melbourne traditionally gets a couple of big thunderstorms every summer, and so far this season we hadn’t had any. Being at work meant that I was right in the middle of the city, but it also meant I had access to the roof of our building. Initially I was disappointed I didn’t have my main gear with me and that I would have to rely on only the R09, but I have been finding more and more lately that the R09 is the best unit to be using under certain circumstances and this was one of those. The nature of the R09 means it has less direction and less sensitive mics than using the shotgun mic with the H4, but when dealing with really loud sounds this has worked out well. Also the relatively short range of the mic pick-up meant that on the roof I didn’t capture the sound of all the air conditioning units. Basically the mics won’t pick up quiet sounds that are more than a few meters away, but the thunder was so loud that it was recorded very well. The end result is some great material from the thunderstorm without any peaks and without much contamination at all so I’m really happy with the results. Location Albert Park Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Boom Pole array and R09 handheld AKG D112 Well today in some ways made up for Avalon not being quite what I had hoped it would be. The Melbourne F1 Grand Prix is on this weekend and today was a day for some F1 practise as well as some of the other cars doing some short race events. I hadn’t planned much on going down there, but when we woke up and could here the cars from our apartment I thought it might be worth taking a look and see what was happening today. Because I hadn’t organised prior media access I just needed to get a ticket and go in normally like everyone else, which was hardly the end of the world, it would just limit where I could go once I got in. I captured a little bit of material at the end of a GT race, I got some fairly good material of some Porches, Lotus, BMW’s and I think maybe a Ferrari. A guy showed me the program and told me there was going to be a BlackHawk Helicopter demonstration in about half an hour so I headed over to where they had one parked just in time for its pre launch prep. I managed to capture a clean full power up and take off sequence which I was really happy about, especially so since the BlackHawks at Avalon had been a total disaster with all the crap music and commentary going on. This time the helicopter was on a patch a grass miles from anyone or any noise with only a few guy standing around waiting to take photos, so it was a great opportunity. Later on I managed to capture a fair bit of good material as two BlackHawks did their manoeuvres. After that I caught some more Army gear as they had brought along their hotted up Land Rover. This thing is insane; six wheels, all supper slick racing tyres and rims, and a 7 litre super charged Chev engine that sounds like thunder. I got a good deal of material from this and also talked to the guys in charge about possibly organising to visit them in the future and get some samples of it actually on the track, so keep an eye out for that one. Mixed in with all this for some reason the local maintenance guys were trimming some trees. I guess maybe it was for safety on the weekend, but either way I even got to record some chain saw sounds, the guy seemed fairly keen to help out to so I got a few extra revs as he was working which was great. Thanks Mr. chain saw guy! Then we got the F1s. Bloody hell but they are loud! I tried different positions and also used my D112 mic which is specifically designed to deal with high output sounds. Obviously all I could ever capture was the sound of an F1 flying past at crazy speeds, and some general race ambience. I am going to need to be a lot more influential before I’ll get an opportunity to attach a mic to one of those beasties, but I did get some good material today, far more than I was originally expecting. Every day I go out recording its almost impossible to predict the outcome. I guess I just need to get out as often as possible and hope for the best. Location
Melbourne Docklands Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Tripod Mount and R09 handheld What do you do when the army decides to spend hours flying around the city chasing each other in helicopters? Set up your equipment of course! The Australian Defence Force had announced recently that there would be various military training exercises occurring over Melbourne in the near future. The first of these took place today and consisted of what appeared to be two Squirrel Class helicopters being pursued by up to four Blackhawk helicopters over the Melbourne city area. A lot of the time the helicopters where flying without running lights on in what I assume was a tactic to approach each other unnoticed. I am also assuming that the air traffic over Melbourne was completely cleared for this exercise as it would have been bloody dangerous otherwise. Because of the completely unpredictable nature of their movements I thought it would be pointless to try and find a “perfect” position to record them and just set up my gear on our balcony. It was more an opportunistic session than a planned one, but I did get a few good passes, most notably when the Blackhawk’s went past in close formation. Having a large memory card in my recorders means I can just switch them on and leave them for several hours just in case something good happens. This was the best approach as the helicopters would often fly off for quite sometime before returning. Location Melbourne CBD Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 tripod mount and R09 handheld This week has been the time of the Moomba Festival in Melbourne. For those of you not from Australia, Moomba is a festival in Melbourne with several parades and performances in various locations as well as a carnival on the Yarra river on the edge of the city. I wanted to record the main parade to add to the library as well as for another project I am working on, so I got up, got my gears ready and headed into the city. The Moomba parade is much like many other parades with musicians and dancers and lots of costumes. Because of Australia’s diverse mix of cultures Moomba has a wide range of looks and sounds to the parade. The biggest issue for recording was the shear range of volumes as things passed by me. Some of the groups had quiet subtle sounds like people tap dancing, or a Buddhist group that had quiet bells and chanting. The other extremes were the amplified bands, and anything with lots of drums and cymbals. (Which are pretty common in most parades.) I was carrying both the R09 in my hand as well as the H4 on the boom pole (as well as my camera to document things. I really need to grow a third arm) I tried to keep an eye on both the monitoring levels of both devices, but even with that some of the sounds still maxed out simply because I had the device set to the absolute lowest input and things were still too loud. Bass drums and cymbals really tend to push the limit sometimes. Usually when I have both devices I tend to set the R09 to a very low level, but I may need to take it to the next level and start using mics designed specifically to cope with high SPL. Time to do some tests I think. The other aspect of today’s recording was the need to be super mobile. I was on the parade area and needed to move quickly and easily around the various groups to get interesting sounds, or to find the best angle to record a group. Initially I had the boom pole extended quite far as I thought it might be useful to lean over the top of groups or position in unusually places, but considering I was using the R09 as well in one hand, the boom tended to be angled down towards the ground, with the microphone itself angled pointing upwards. This is a fairly good position to use the boom in, however it did mean I had an extra length of pole sticking out behind me. Thankfully I realised this before I clubbed someone from either the crowd or the parade with the end of the pole, and quickly retracted the excess length. I’ve often found that even prior planning for some events doesn’t help much when the real action starts and you find yourself having to respond to other people’s actions, so you really need to stay flexible. Considering there have been several instances lately where I have used both the R09 and the H4 to capture pretty much identical material I think I may need to look at mounting the R09 on the boom pole with the H4, thus removing the need for me to dedicate another hand to it.
Location Melbourne Docklands Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 tripod mount and R09 handheld I planned to capture some more of the domestic sounds I want to add to the library today. I set-up the gear on the tripod so I could use both hands to deal with things like a toaster and a kettle and can openers. I got a fairly good selection of samples in the apartment, and tried a few odd things like putting the R09 in the freezer to see what it could record. So far I am not satisfied with the results of that, but I think it has potential so I’ll try again at another time. While I was recording various things inside I kept hearing drums from outside so I thought I would go and investigate. I was lucky to discover just over the other side of the docklands area there was a dragon boat racing event. So I grabbed my gear and went for a walk. The racing was from all around Victoria with a large number of teams competing. I set myself up on a pontoon pier half way along the race course and managed to get a fairly good selection of material of both the actual races as well as the boats paddling by slowly on their way from the martialling area to the race start point. The pier itself had a large post in the centre at the end and each time the boats went past I found myself tracking the boats and pointing straight at the post (with the resultant occlusion sound issues) The problem was there just wasn’t a better position to be in. If I had stood on the dock bank where there was no pole I would have been 100 meters further away from the boats themselves. It shows that sometimes there is no perfect position and you just need to make the best of what you have. (Sitting on top of the post would have been precarious and uncomfortable.) Obviously the best location would have been inside one of the boats, but as that wasn’t going to happen any time soon, I recorded about 5 races which I can cut up later to get some good sound examples. One notable thing as far as recording for the day was the nearby pub that had some music playing. They had speakers both indoors and outdoor and the music was carrying to where I was setup. I decided to go and ask them if they could switch off the outdoor speakers for a little while I recorded the races and they were really good about it. I made sure I went back afterwards and let them know when I was finished so they could turn them back on. Sometimes just politely asking for someone to help out can have really good results. Its not always the case, but I’ve found its certainly worth the effort of finding out, so don’t be afraid under these circumstances to approach someone and explain to them what your doing. A lot of people find filming and recording interesting so they are often happy to help if they can and if its not a huge trouble for them. I like to be helpful in return and let them know when I’ve finished so they can get on with what they were doing.
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AuthorStephan Schütze has been recording sounds for over twenty years. This journal logs his thoughts and experiences Categories
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April 2019
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