How to protect Microphones in Outdoor Scenarios

[Drew Stephenson]

Don't worry, it was tongue in cheek.
Hope all goes well later, good luck.

[Hugh Robjohns]

I grabbed that clip with Audacity Nigel and it looked and sounded like mono to me so I viewed it on Samplitude's vectorscope. Pure mono i.e. no directional information.

Something in your system is VERY wrong, then Dave. Here's a screen grab from RME's DIGICheck when monitoring the output of the Youtube player here.

Looks like stereo to me. Not W-I-D-E stereo, admittedly, but definitely not the thin vertical line that would indicate mono. And it sounds stereo, too...

[Hugh Robjohns]

Well maybe my extraction process was flawed James so if someone could do that and post a (normalized) clip that shows the difference information I would be obliged.

Here's another of rain recorded in the UK through open windows:

https://www.soundsnap.com/ambience_subu ... window_wav

Even Stereo-er!

[ef37a]

Yes Hugh, that soundsnap is stereo and Audacity records it as such and Samplitude shows a 'blob' instead of a fuzzy line. I have not changed any settings in Audacity and I record clips from R3 quite often for my son, never broke, don't fix it. I shall try that other sample later.

Dave.

[Drew Stephenson]

Just figured out that I accidently posted the wrong link a couple of pages back. It was supposed to be a specific song link. Apologies for spamming the forum and potentially sending anyone on a wild goose chase.
My bad.

[N i g e l]

I listened to both and was discombobulated.


Theres quite a heavy rumble [or do my mics lack bass ?], nice use of the buzzing insect flying in an s-curve.

[Arpangel]

::: goes off to take recording down :::

Sorry Drew! A little stressed today, got an ECG at 4:45.

Dave.

Hope all's well dave, and they take all the stickers off!

[ef37a]

::: goes off to take recording down :::

Sorry Drew! A little stressed today, got an ECG at 4:45.

Dave.

Hope all's well dave, and they take all the stickers off!

Thank you Toni. Doc said there was no IMMEDIATE concern but they want more time to study the graphs and more blood tests. I hope they come up with something soon. I get knackered now just getting out of the car and carrying my bit of shopping up the garden path...VERY out of breath.

Dave.

[Arpangel]

::: goes off to take recording down :::

Sorry Drew! A little stressed today, got an ECG at 4:45.

Dave.

Hope all's well dave, and they take all the stickers off!

Thank you Toni. Doc said there was no IMMEDIATE concern but they want more time to study the graphs and more blood tests. I hope they come up with something soon. I get knackered now just getting out of the car and carrying my bit of shopping up the garden path...VERY out of breath.

Dave.

It's awful, you’ll be OK, I'm sure, trust me, I’m a forum member
I'm in a wheelchair sometimes now, and using crutches, I'm on the waiting list for a knee transplant but it’s taking ages.

[PippaPumpkin]

I am sorry to read that some of you are dealing with health issues. I hope you all will be fine. Take good care of yourselves.

Thanks for the response. I have looked at field recorders and they seem to quite often have 45° angled X or Y stereo mics. If this is a good configuration to capture the sound of rain in stereo, I may get away with only one DIY blimp. I would buy one plastic basket, put two layers of bed sheets around them and have my two pencil mics protected by that single blimp to keep things simple and to cut cost. Is this a good idea?

[Wonks]

XY mics are normally referred to as having a 90° relative angle. I know it’s 45° for each mic relative to the ‘straight ahead’ position, but it avoids confusion and misunderstanding if you stick with using the relative angle. The term ‘XY’ comes from the arrangement of the X and Y axis on a graph, with the 90° angle between them.

I assume the sheeting is to go on the outside of the bucket to stop the noise of rain hitting the bucket?

What you don’t want is mics sitting inside a plastic bucket with solid sides. The sound reflections from the sides of the bucket will really mess up and colour the stereo image.

If you cut most of the bucket away, so there’s the barest amount left to act as a frame, and then cover that in furry material, then that could work as a blimp, but putting the mics inside a solid bucket to protect them from the rain isn’t going to get you a great recording.

At best, you’ll need a big bucket with acoustic foam inside to reduce sound reflections. But you’ll still get a compromised sound (as do people who sit their mics deep in their reflection filters).

The bucket idea is something you can test on a dry day with no air movement. Record the ambient sound with a XY pair in the open, and then fit the bucket. You should notice a significant difference in the sound.

[PippaPumpkin]

XY mics are normally referred to as having a 90° relative angle. I know it’s 45° for each mic relative to the ‘straight ahead’ position, but it avoids confusion and misunderstanding if you stick with using the relative angle. The term ‘XY’ comes from the arrangement of the X and Y axis on a graph, with the 90° angle between them.

Understood

I assume the sheeting is to go on the outside of the bucket to stop the noise of rain hitting the bucket?

No, I thought I might get away using that instead of the furry material.

What you don’t want is mics sitting inside a plastic bucket with solid sides. The sound reflections from the sides of the bucket will really mess up and colour the stereo image.

I see.

If you cut most of the bucket away, so there’s the barest amount left to act as a frame, and then cover that in furry material, then that could work as a blimp, but putting the mics inside a solid bucket to protect them from the rain isn’t going to get you a great recording.

How about these? Okay, I have to keep the mics under a roof.

At best, you’ll need a big bucket with acoustic foam inside to reduce sound reflections. But you’ll still get a compromised sound (as do people who sit their mics deep in their reflection filters).

The bucket idea is something you can test on a dry day with no air movement. Record the ambient sound with a XY pair in the open, and then fit the bucket. You should notice a significant difference in the sound.

Maybe it is worth trying to avoid the windnoise by placing the mics closer to the wall where hopefully there will be less wind.

[James Perrett]

Does anyone have a copy of Mike Skeet's design for a home made windshield? I remember that a friend of mine wrote to him and received back a whole bundle of paper containing various designs of microphone arrays. I can't find anything online though.

[Wonks]

You need the furry material to reduce wind noise. Just like on an animal, the fur progressively slows the wind speed down the closer it gets to the skin/backing fabric. You need the depth that a fur-like material gives.

If there was a better material to use, the blimp manufacturers would be using it!

Those open-sided buckets are far more like it, though I think they really would need to be cut down even more. The less hard material there is for sound to bounce off, the better. A couple of those buckets back to back, with quite a few of the links removed, could make a reasonable shell for a blimp. But assuming the bottom of one bucket is the forward-facing part of the blimp, you'd want to try and remove as muck of the thick rim around the bottom of the bucket as possible.

The rear-facing bucket doesn't matter so much, but you don't really want a thick line of plastic obscuring the sound coming from the front.

[ef37a]

A better starting point might be a pair of large, stainless steel mesh vegetable strainers?
Cable tie them together and the handles might be useful to hang the rig?

Several ways to skin this cat...NO! Don't do THAT!

Dave.

[PippaPumpkin]

Okay, before I try to built a blimp myself, I am going to try to avoid windnoise by placing the mics somewhere with litte wind.

Several ways to skin this cat...NO! Don't do THAT!

So what you are saying is, that I shouldn't have skinned that cat? This is terrible...