A Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) outside my bedroom window at 5 AM this morning! It's easy enough to record a Chaffinch, but I decided to try and get a recording with a minimum of other birds and other sounds at the same time. I recorded this chap for 30 minutes, and have spliced together the 4 cleanest trills from that period. Sony ECM-MS907 into iRiver H120 raw WAV. For the first trill, the H120 gain was set to 36 dB. For the 2nd trill, 30 dB, and for the last 2, 24 dB. I then amplified the parts to all the same level in Cool Edit Pro. Apart from that, no processing has been applied. Which setting sounds best to you? Can you detect the splices?
Type
Flac (.flac)
Duration
0:26.924
File size
2.9 MB
Sample rate
44100.0 Hz
Bit depth
16 bit
Channels
Stereo
Comments
19 years, 9 months ago
The splices are unnoticeable, you made a good job. Also, I cannnot see (or hear) any spectral difference between the last three trills.
As for the first, it has just a bit more level but the same signal/noise ratio (as expected, since gain above 24 db in the iRiver is like digital zoom in photo cameras: no new detail is added). So I guess the result would have been the same if you added these 12 db in CoolEdit while editing.
Now, even though the result may not differ, digital gain (above 24 dB) gives you a chance to real-time monitor very soft sources, which in nature field recordings can be extremely handy. So I don't think digital is completely useless. As a rule of thumb, I would stick to <36 dB. Of course inserting a battery box or mic preamp between the recorder amd the microphone would change the scenario, but that's another story (I mean, with a mic preamp you could/should set gain to 0 on iRiver)
