[Dorian Gray]

Hello,

I'm thinking of doing a little project involving photographs and audio recordings of city life. A bit of old-school street photography in a slide-show presentation, with an audio track of ambient sounds in the background. I'm seeking to record the sounds of people moving about and chatting (not actual conversations, but passing snippets would be nice), footsteps, traffic, the sound of train doors and buzzers and announcements, rain, etc.

How would I go about recording this kind of thing? I tried with my mobile phone and the result is unusable. It simply doesn't pick up sounds that subjectively seem quite loud to my ear. And what it does pick up is ruined by noise and humming artefacts.

I know next to nothing about audio recording and gear for doing so, though I know a little about sound more generally. I want the device/contraption to be portable and relatively discreet. Do I need a glorified Walkman and an omnidirectional mic? Would one of those Olympus recorders used for recording interviews work? Do I need something else entirely? Can it be done without breaking the bank? I don't need studio sound quality of course. I just want something that picks up fairly faint ambient sounds without a lot of fuss. The cheaper the better!

Any tips from the musicians, audio people, etc., around here?

[InactionMan]

From this link: http://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org...audioequip.htm

This little device was designed for field recording on an iPod. As far as I know, people that do field recordings use pretty much any dedicated recording device.

Edit!: Holy crap, some of those dedicated recorders are bloody expensive! Looks like they cost between $400 to several thousand dollars.

[Dorian Gray]

That link has a lot of useful info, including some interesting opinions/snobbery about various brands, etc. Good stuff!

The trouble is, I can't spend 500 euros on this. Perhaps I should consider buying used gear. It's amazing that a portable recorder can cost so much!

The Alesis ProTrack is interesting but I don't have a suitable iPod (just an old shuffle).

[curiousuburb]

Budget thinking can trade quality for euro...

Technically, you only need:

• Input device: (this can be headphones - although the quality will suck compared to a professional microphone, but the speaker drivers actually do work in reverse)
• Recording medium: wax cylinder, phone, iPod, etc
• Paris:

Depending on what you need out of the recording (quality/differentiation of sound/etc), different mikes (omni/shortfield/parabolic/etc) will offer drastically different costs/benefits.

You can probably find a lot of the ambient sound effects (doors, trains, footsteps, etc) online or in commercial audio sfx libraries. Might even be available in 3rd party Garageband Jam Packs.

You'll need Shockwave, but check out this similar (Award winning) sampling concept from Luke Whittaker

[Swox]

Do you own a laptop? What's your budget?

[Dorian Gray]

Originally Posted by curiousuburb Input device: (this can be headphones - although the quality will suck compared to a professional microphone, but the speaker drivers actually do work in reverse)

I used to use that trick for chatting on Skype on a Windows PC with no built-in microphone. I remember the sensitivity was very low though (I may be using the word "sensitivity" inaccurately; what I mean is faint sounds weren't picked up). Only one channel worked too, if I remember rightly.

Originally Posted by curiousuburb Depending on what you need out of the recording (quality/differentiation of sound/etc), different mikes (omni/shortfield/parabolic/etc) will offer drastically different costs/benefits.

I want to record ambient sounds like rain, footsteps, the noise of Metro trains, etc. What should I be looking for? Stereo may or may not be important, I'm not sure. If it comes down to cost, I'd rather have a good quality mono recording than a poorer stereo recording. The audio quality needs to be good enough to be evocative of the location. It doesn't need to be totally noise-free, I suppose.

Originally Posted by curiousuburb You can probably find a lot of the ambient sound effects (doors, trains, footsteps, etc) online or in commercial audio sfx libraries. Might even be available in 3rd party Garageband Jam Packs.

I could probably find photos too, or perhaps even this whole idea replicated to perfection. Wouldn't be mine though.

Originally Posted by curiousuburb You'll need Shockwave, but check out this similar (Award winning) sampling concept from Luke Whittaker

Very cool!

Originally Posted by Swox Do you own a laptop? What's your budget?

I have a PowerBook with a battery that lasts about half an hour. I wouldn't want to carry the laptop around Paris, opened, plus a mic and lead. Too much work by far! As for the budget, I don't have a fixed budget. I want to get a feel for the trade-off between a 15 euro microphone hooked up to a cassette recorder on the one hand, and a 200 euro microphone and digital recorder on the other. I have no idea what kind of results would be expected from those two combos, other than that one is probably better than the other. Recording relatively quiet environmental sounds seems much more difficult than recording human speech at close range.

[bassplayinMacFiend]

The Edirol R-09 has received good reviews, but it's over $300. The Zoom H2 looks like a good unit, and it can be found in the US for about $180. Both of these units have integrated microphones.

[Swox]

Your best and cheapest bet might be to use your PB - buy a new battery for it, or record in places where you can plug in.

I think you're going to find doing this with low end equipment and getting remotely decent quality is harder than it may seem. Recording things like that is typically done on sound stages because of the difficulties of recording outside.

You're going to need a wind screen if you're recording outside at all or wind it's all you'll hear on your recording, even on a really calm day. You're going to want to record digitally if you're recording really quiet noises - digital has a much lower "noise floor" (tape has a natural "hiss"), that's one of the reasons I recommend the PB.

Here's how I'd do it:

The people moving about and chatting is easily done inside, and at the train station. I'd just sit down at a café in a train station and record all of the sounds. Go at busy or slower times of day for different noise levels. Garageband has a nice automatic input level option that will move it up and down for you as volume levels increase or decrease. You want to capture everything at the highest level possible, then change the level in the mix (this reduces noise).

Traffic is pretty loud, so you could do it from inside by pointing your mic toward an open window near the street. Experiment with different distances from the window to see what gets your the best sound without any wind blowing on the mic. You might be able to put it almost right in the window - I've never tried this myself. If you get a really heavy rain, you could do it this way too.

I've got a Micflex, which does a pretty nice job for about $50, and it plugs right into your USB, so you don't need an amp.

Sorry if that was a bit long winded. Please ask if you want clarity anywhere or more info/advice.

[psmith2.0]

What do I need to record the sounds of Paris?

Mount a small, motion/sound-activated condenser mic above her headboard.



Thanks, gang...I'm here all week!

[TMT]

You could try a portable Minidisc recorder, its very portable ( ) and the quality should be fine. there are some models with a mic - and a line - input.
Don't forget your headphones to check your recording levels, and for the microphone, try to get one with a directional characteristic, not a spherical one.
I'd try a broadcast camera rental or something similar, you should get a decent mic ( a Sennheiser MKH 416 would be a good choice and is a standard mic), a windscreen and a 48 V Phantom power supply for a reasonable price (here in Munich it would be about 20 €/day), but you'd need a recorder with a line - input.

[Luca]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Mount a small, motion/sound-activated condenser mic above her headboard. Thanks, gang...I'm here all week!

LOL, I thought the same thing.

"She's pretty easy... so as long as you're reasonably attractive and you own a nice car and a tape recorder, it shouldn't be hard."

[Dorian Gray]

Thanks for your tips, Swox. They sound good except for using the PowerBook: I can't imagine dragging that around train stations, etc., even if I got a new battery.

Pscates2.0: heck, I would have known how to record that Paris!

TMT: I've always liked the idea of the MiniDisc players/recorders, but a nice one is astonishingly expensive even today. From my preliminary reading it seems that existing owners of MiniDisc recorders would do well to hang onto them for another few years, but that it's not the most future-proofed choice for a newcomer. Recorders using flash memory seem to be taking over.

The rental idea sounds sensible. I might well go down that route for a really good microphone. But I'd like to own a recorder so I can record stuff when the mood hits me.

I've been drooling over the Sony PCM-D50, which is a metal portable recorder with typical Sony design and quality. A wide variety of people seem to think it's the reference product in its price class... but that's about 500 euros (maybe 375 euros by buying on eBay from the US, without a warranty). What a beauty though:



More realistically, I might stretch to the Zoom H2 Handy Recorder that bassplayinMacFiend mentioned. No analogue volume knobs here, I'm afraid:



The construction is cheap plastic and the design looks like something from a failing Chinese knockoff merchant, but maybe that's because they put all their effort into the mics, amps and analogue-to-digital converters? It's just kind of hard to imagine paying 180 euros for something that looks like it might cost €12.99, tops.

Below are charts showing the characteristics of the Zoom H2's built-in microphones. Are these good, bad, or indifferent for recording ambient sound?





Also, is there a technical specification which represents the noise floor (if that's the right term) of a recorder or microphone? A lot of the specifications that use variations on dB for units are meaningless to me.

[709]

That Sony piece is mad sexy....almost surreal in it's modern-retro self.

I, for one, welcome our digital-walkie-talkie using overlords.

[curiousuburb]

Sony: Knobs to 11! Stereopunk!
Zoom: Function over Form ain't a bad thing.

The Zoom's mic range is weak at infrasound and dogs-and-under25s-only ranges, so you may lose some of the thrum of the metro or some high treble, but unless your audience has superb hearing they may not discern a difference until you get to much more expensive mikes. Impressive specs and features, though.

If you want something spontaneous that you are comfortable carrying on a regular basis, looking for serendipitous sounds, then portability/battery/interface/easeofuse may matter more than budget.

Same trick with Astronomy... the best tool is the one you use. Owning a fancy telescope that you never set up is lousy value for money over binoculars that you grab whenever the mood strikes.

There are plenty of mp3 players that replicate the basic function of the iPod. Not all are as well designed.

Check the reviews if you can't 'test drive' them in person first

but particularly if you're planning a purchase that you'll use... YMMV

[Bryson]

I think it's worth noting that no matter what recording device you use, the "background" noise as opposed to the things you want to record, will indeed still be louder than it seems when you're there - unless you record and play it back in a binaural setup. That's because you have, installed in your head, one of the most sophisticated noise processing and rejection setups around....

That said, either of those recorders will be fine - you get what you pay for, but if you can't stretch to the Sony, I'm sure the other one will be ok.

Mic response looks pretty flat to me - not great, but pretty good. Pretty similar to most "regular" microphones. (Example), but not quite as flat as a dedicated "reference" microphone. It should be perfectly fine for your needs. The pickup patterns seem quite broad - the recording isn't going to be very "stereo" if that's important to you.

I'm not sure what you mean by not liking having noise floors in dB? That's what they're measured in! You're looking for "self noise", or more usefully, the signal-to-noise ratio. I'm afraid they're going to be in dB.....

I've used the slightly more expensive H4 and it was perfectly adequate for this kind of task. Obviously, if you really wanted to do it "properly" you'd setup a crossed stereo pair of shock-mounted mics and a separate recorder. It somewhat depends on what the final use is.

You'll probably find that handling noise and mechanically transmitted noise will be the thing that you find the most irritating doing this. The tripod mount is a good investment and getting some kind of shock mount would be a good idea. You can [url=http://www.wiremonkey.com/diy_shock_1.htm]make them yourself[/url
] out of rubber bands if it comes to that!

[Dorian Gray]

Originally Posted by Bryson Mic response looks pretty flat to me - not great, but pretty good. Pretty similar to most "regular" microphones. [...] but not quite as flat as a dedicated "reference" microphone. It should be perfectly fine for your needs. The pickup patterns seem quite broad - the recording isn't going to be very "stereo" if that's important to you.

Sounds good overall, then. Here are similar graphs for the Zoom H4, for comparison:






And for the Sony PCM-D50:





I've read that the Zoom H2 is surprisingly decent for the money, with the exception of its noisy external mic preamp, which renders it less desirable for recording with an external mic (at least without a plug-in preamp of some kind).

Originally Posted by Bryson I'm not sure what you mean by not liking having noise floors in dB? That's what they're measured in! You're looking for "self noise", or more usefully, the signal-to-noise ratio. I'm afraid they're going to be in dB.....

I know I can't avoid that icky dB unit , but there are so many variations on it which confuse me. For example, the built-in "electret condenser microphones" of the Sony PCM-D50 have an output sensitivity of -35.0 dB/Pa at 1 kHz. The maximum input is 120 dB SPL. The noise level is 20.0 dB SPL(A). The Greek-to-English ratio is approaching infinity.

The only mention of signal-to-noise ratio I can find is the line input to line output figure of 93 dB or greater (1 kHz IHF-A) in 24-bit mode, for the Sony PCM-D50. That doesn't sound relevant to recording with the built-in mics.

Originally Posted by Bryson You'll probably find that handling noise and mechanically transmitted noise will be the thing that you find the most irritating doing this. The tripod mount is a good investment and getting some kind of shock mount would be a good idea. You can make them yourself out of rubber bands if it comes to that!

Cheers for the advice, Bryson. Here's a nice one for the Zoom H2.

[ezkcdude]

I have the Zoom H2, and it's a great little device. See review here.

[Dorian Gray]

Thanks for the link, ezkcdude. Good reviews of the other flash recorders on that website too.

At the moment I can't decide between the following:

1. Zoom H2. Cheapest option, probably pretty decent recordings with the built-in mics. Smallest option, which is very nice for discreet recordings. But the mic preamps are supposedly really poor if I ever want to record with an external mic. I'd love to keep that option open.

2. Zoom H4. Bigger, and has a horrible user interface by most accounts. Has the same cheap appearance and material/build quality of the H2, but is supposed to have much better mic preamps. Does away with the surround-sound recording of the H2, which I wouldn't miss anyway. Widespread reports of an electronic noise spike around 700 Hz from the switching power supply (or something like that). The big debate for me is whether the XLR inputs and 48 V phantom power are worth something. After reading about how impedance-balanced lines greatly reduce electromagnetic interference, this strikes me as an elegant engineering solution that I'd like to have. Would also open up the possibility of using very high-quality external mics in the future.

3. Sony PCM-D50. From what I've read, and I've read a bit by now , this is by far the best portable recorder anywhere near 500 euros, in terms of low noise, ergonomics, genuinely useful features, and build quality. It's engineered to a whole different quality standard than the Zooms. But it's 500 euros, and frustratingly, it doesn't have XLR inputs and phantom power. To get that you have to buy the Sony XLR-1 accessory, which costs almost as much again and bolts onto the back of the PCM-D50. By this stage the combined devices use eight AA cells compared to the Zoom H4's two.

If the Sony had XLR inputs I'd probably be really silly and drop 500 euros on it, just to know I'm not missing out on anything good.

On the other hand, I think there's going to be some serious miniaturisation in flash recorders in the next couple of years. It makes no sense that the best MiniDisc recorders, with mic preamps of similar quality to the PCM-D50, are vastly smaller despite having to accommodate a bulky disc drive. So from that point of view it might make sense to get the Zoom H2 now, which is the smallest flash recorder I've read about, and upgrade (a) if I feel the need, which is hard to know at this stage while relying on other people's accounts, and (b) when someone (probably Sony) releases a recorder equal to the PCM-D50, but far smaller.

[Dorian Gray]

Originally Posted by my indecisive self On the other hand, I think there's going to be some serious miniaturisation in flash recorders in the next couple of years. It makes no sense that the best MiniDisc recorders, with mic preamps of similar quality to the PCM-D50, are vastly smaller despite having to accommodate a bulky disc drive. So from that point of view it might make sense to get the Zoom H2 now, which is the smallest flash recorder I've read about, and upgrade (a) if I feel the need, which is hard to know at this stage while relying on other people's accounts, and (b) when someone (probably Sony) releases a recorder equal to the PCM-D50, but far smaller.

Told you so! (PDF brochure here.) Olympus also came out with the LS-10/LS-11/LS-5.

The Sony PCM-M10 looks awesome, but: (1) we're back to cheap plastic in the build, and (2) the mics aren't very directional (though seemingly great otherwise).

I didn't get a recorder in 2008, but I'm planning to get one soon for the project I mentioned in this thread (I've been taking photos in the meantime). I think it's a choice between the Olympus LS-5/LS-11 and the Sony PCM-M10.

Olympus LS-5/LS-11 pros:
- good build quality with plenty of metal
- built-in mics provide decent stereo image
- ergonomic form factor
- uses SD cards I already own

Olympus LS-5/LS-11 cons:
- built-in mics noisier than Sony's, and have a steeper bass roll-off
- external mic pre-amps slightly noisier than Sony's

Sony PCM-M10 pros:
- very quiet built-in mics
- quiet external mic pre-amps
- portable audio people seem to think it has a better user interface (but they might be used to Sony designs from decades of Sony domination?)

Sony PCM-M10 cons:
- relatively poor build quality with plenty of plastic, weak doors, etc. (this ain't a PCM-D50!)
- omni mics
- uses microSD cards instead of normal SD

Hmm. I might need a year or two to decide...

[Kraetos]

bea na na na IU WAJ you!

[Dorian Gray]

Too late, Kraetos: I just got a PCM-M10!

This morning I tracked down a few online recordings from the Olympus LS-11 and Sony PCM-M10. To me, the Olympus LS-11 actually sounded better for anything reasonably loud: the mics certainly do a vastly better job of creating stereo separation than the Sony's omni mics. However the built-in mics are also much noisier with quiet sources. More importantly, the Oly's external mic pre-amps are also significantly noisier than the Sony's, so if I want to buy a really good microphone in the future I'd be better served by the PCM-M10 (though neither of these have XLR inputs or phantom power, so it might be a moot point).

My instinct was increasingly to go with the Olympus LS-11 or LS-5, but the PCM-M10's quiet mics/pre-amps and this very positive review sealed the deal. (The same guy has an intriguing MacBook Pro review too.) If the Olympus's pre-amps were closer to the Sony's sonically—they wouldn't even have to be exactly as good—I'd have gone with the LS-11/LS-5 instead.

Decision made. Now to get some good recordings!