Under the Sea...almost

Location
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.