Freesound Forums

It looks like this is about 2 years old, but I found it very informative,
I wish I could find something like this on figure 8s.. If anyone knows
of such a comparison, please let me know.. Thanks!

http://www.dvfreelancer.com/articles/shotgun_shootout.html

brfindla
It looks like this is about 2 years old, but I found it very informative,
I wish I could find something like this on figure 8s.. If anyone knows
of such a comparison, please let me know.. Thanks!

http://www.dvfreelancer.com/articles/shotgun_shootout.html

you need to find one company that does a combination of figure 8 and cardiod that are compatible together for MS... Schoeps, Senheiser, Shre, Sony or other...

brfindla
It looks like this is about 2 years old, but I found it very informative,
I wish I could find something like this on figure 8s.. If anyone knows
of such a comparison, please let me know.. Thanks!
http://www.dvfreelancer.com/articles/shotgun_shootout.html

No exactly what you want but listening to this three samples might help you to get an idea of the performance of my particular combination of fig8, shotgun ,midside:
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=24649
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=24650
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=24651

dobroide Thanks!

Yeah that was a great help, I have an ME66 and ME67, and an FP24, so it was very cool to hear with alot of my existing equipment. I was asking this in another thread, but as you are here.. I'll ask here. How do you decode the MS? any inexpensive solutions MAC or PC?

Thanks!

Brian

brfindla
dobroide Thanks!
How do you decode the MS? any inexpensive solutions MAC or PC?
Brian

You might also find these sample packs helpful, as examples of different mic configurations for recording background/ambient sound:

http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/packsViewSingle.php?id=1431
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/packsViewSingle.php?id=1451
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/packsViewSingle.php?id=1417

(The MS in the above samples has been mixed to conventional AB).

All things being equal, for recording purely ambient sound in a large (indoor our outdoor) spaces, I've found MS to be no better thah other micing techniques, and generally prefer the results from a Jecklin disc or a SASS "head" if I can afford the bulk. (Of course, you'd likely be using other mics for these other techniques, so all things are rarely equal here).

The great virtue of MS over other stereo techniques (XY, etc) for recording a sound and its environment is that, with only two mics and two recording channels, you get a nice stereo image for the background and get the main sound directly on-axis in front of the mid mic. The two channels also give you a great deal of control in post-production mixing over the stereo image and level of the center channel. This has obvious benefits for recording, say., documentary film dialog. The disadvantage is that you can't use the recording at all without the post-processing, and can't monitor the stereo image while recording unless your recorder/mixer has an MS decoder for the headphone monitor.

I thought the recordings were amazing.. closing my eyes with the cars going by I get a bit of a shiver as I think I may be too far out in the road even though I'm just sitting in my bedroom. Its funny years ago, I was heavily involved in audio as an engineer.. but I never did anything with recording.. I realize I have alot to learn again..even though most of the technical end I have no problem with.. now its down to learning the craft and art. That's something you have down. Thanks for that... also some pretty amazing gear you have..

My ex-wife, for all her faults was an amazing photographer..so good in fact that my girlfriend won't let me get rid of some of her work. She used to get irritated by people who would by professional quality cameras and suddlen believe they gifted artist even though they could frame a shot with their new $5K camera. Obvously, having equipment of quality is necessary to the final product, but it generally worthless if you don't know how to use it correctly. You do.

Thanks!

Brian

Another comment,

Out of the three recordings I found the jecklin recording, the smoothest trasistions.. when the MS seemed to be more pronounced.. almost a little "compression" sounding in comparison.. I would never have noticed that without the comparison. Never having done anything with a jecklin either.. did you make the thing yourself, or was it something you purchased? I think I'd still favor the MS for what I want to do.. to mics over the top of a camcorder is just much easier to deal with than either the jecklin or XY.. though if the mics were small enough I think the XY would work too. (But I'd hate having people keep coming up to me telling me my mics were crooked).

The other thing which was really strange (a limitation of MP3 no doubt).. was if you listen to the crickets when the car goes by.. they do some really really strange sounds.. sounds which *ARE NOT* present when download the file and listen to it.. try it.. just listen to the crickets when the cars go by..wierd twinkling like little bells.

Its just the post thing with the MS.. I'm going to mess around with Final Cut and see if I can figure out how to invert a wave.. if I can do that, I think I can do it.

Thanks for this.. you can learn more in 10 minutes of listening to recordings than I would have thought possible.

Brian

Brian,

First of all, thanks for the very kind words. I'm really glad someone is finding these helpful!

As for my Jecklin disk: they're pretty simple and aren't hard to make, and I've had good (sounding) results from the two that I home-brewed before I broke down and bought one from Core Sound ( http://www.core-sound.com/ ). Unfortunately, my DIY disks were just not rugged enough to survive checked luggage and the rigors of assembly and dissassembly under field use; they lasted only two or three uses each before the mounts started to become wobbly . If you're a better fabricator than I am (which is likely, given that that seems to be category into which almost everyone falls), you may have better results.

Yeah, the traffic/crickets and water recordings really suffer from the MP3 compression in the preview feature. It's not especially objectional in the traffic recordings, but the water recordings sound absolutely dreadful unless you download them.

You mention wanting to do sound for video. I've got only very, very limited experience here, so I'm the wrong person to ask, but these samples may not tell you everything you want to know, since they are of wide-area ambient sound, without a main "dialog" source "in front of the camera". So one of the big advantages of MS -- the ability to point the mid mic directly on-axis toward the main sound source -- isn't really shown off here.

I know there are MS microphones (designed for video) that have MS decoders built in so you don't have to do the decoding in post production, but I have no direct experience with any of them.

As for the decoding software, I'm not sure if Final Cut can do MS decoding, but I do know that Logic Pro (which plays well with Final Cut) can, so that may be an option for you.