Freesound Forums

Hi all,
I stumbled on Freesound a few weeks ago and am mega impressed I have to say. So much so I now have a Sony MZ-N1 Net MD Player/Recorder and a £20.00 stereo mic from maplin to get me up and running. Although I cannot use the USB cradle to pull the recordings off the MD to the PC, I am going use Win NMD via the Line-Out... I also plan to upgrade the Mic to a Sony ECM-DS70P (reading Acclivity's post's and hearing his samples decided that for me).

So, heres the thing. The MZ-N1 has a Plug in Power mic input and my Mic is battery powered too. I can set the sensitivity on the MD from Hi to Low as well as adjust the recording volume. Of course the Mic being powered helps too, but what combination of settings is it best to start with? I plan to field record nature, town ambience and maybe industry too. I seem to get alot of background "hiss" at the moment, but dont want to have the Mic so low that I miss details and subtleties either. I appreciate I will have to experiment, but wondered if you guys/gals might be able to steer me in the right direction, especially those using Sony MD.

Thanks for any input

rolfi

Hi Rolfi,

Welcome abroad. Great that your are inspired but this place! Also welcome to the world of field-recording or as some people call it phonography.
I havent recently used a sony md, but I have used one for years before i got my current recorder. Try to aim for a reasonable loud recording without clipping (thats what happens if you push a digital recorder in the red). From what i can recall in recent dicussions on yahoogroups related to the topic (nature_recordists and the phonography group) the N1 has a pretty decent mike preamp in it. So using thehigh setting when its relatively quiet shouldnt make the noise any worse.
I would start with stuff in a medium to loud enviroment because quiet nature recording is one of the most demanding things to do for your gear. Industry or town ambience would be a great place to start (construction sites maybe?). If the mike your using supports PIP (Plugin Power), which I would expect, then you dont need to also battery power it (but it does save your MD battery some juice).
If possible I would try and see if you could get the usb cradle to work because if you go thru the line out then your adding another layer of digital to analog and analog to digital conversion, with all the noise and other artifacts that are inherent to that process.
Then ofcourse there is the post-production stage, after you've done your recording you take your recordings in and edit, "mix" them. Kinda of what the dark room is to analog photography, the post-production stage is to sound. Here you can "fix in the mix". Or not really but you can do your best to polish. And ofcourse edit. Editing is, for me, the hardest part, it means choosing which parts you'd like to keep and which aren't interesting enough. I can never throw anything away so i always have burn a copy of the raw material and put it somewhere were ill never look again....
Anyways, what i wanted to tell you was that perhaps some low pass (hicut) filtering will remove some of the noise. Do this carefully because naturally, you dont want to remove any of the information that you planned on recording. So, you do this by listneing carefully. Move the filter from hi to low (lets say you start with 18 khz and then you start to move down to 10 khz, slowly). And then go back to 18 khz. or maybe even higher. Try to hear at which point your loosing definition, space, or just some sounds (insects perhaps). Perhaps find a compromise between noise reduction and clarity.
Anyways perhaps a bit of a bigger answer then what you were looking for but above all, i suggest experimenting. Both at the recording site and when you get back. I still use my 20 dollar stereo mike, and love the stuff i get from it so enjoy yours

Cheers

mr_rolfi
Hi all,
I also plan to upgrade the Mic to a Sony ECM-DS70P (reading Acclivity's post's and hearing his samples decided that for me).

rolfi

Welcome Rolfi. Glad to have been of help in your decisions. The mic I use is actually the Sony ECM-MS907 and it cost me about £80 five years ago.

Self-noise of the mic and recorder in the form of hiss does seem to be the scourge of nature recording. I don't think the choice of high or low gain on the MD significantly affects the signal to noise ratio - I think the mic itself produces most of the noise and the high gain setting just amplifies both the noise and the target signal. It's best to record with more gain without clipping, as a quiet recording inherently loses high frequency detail.

Dobroide and I are both enjoying using the combination of MZ-N10 MD as pre-amp into an iRiver H120 hard-disk WAV recorder. This combination provides lots of potential gain with relatively low noise, and the convenience of direct digital transfer to the PC of the WAV files via USB.

Mike

acclivity

Dobroide and I are both enjoying using the combination of MZ-N10 MD as pre-amp into an iRiver H120 hard-disk WAV recorder. This combination provides lots of potential gain with relatively low noise, and the convenience of direct digital transfer to the PC of the WAV files via USB.

Mike

Plus the added advantage of the large hard disk (by now I have more than 4 Gb of wavs without need to recharge the MD, which is great)

Hi guys,
thanks for the responses :wink:

Anton, I will see if i get time after work tonight to try this. Probably spend most my time scratching my head though

Mike, yes, I actually meant the ECM-MS907 but was looking the ECM-DS70P up on t'internet as a way of making "discrete" recordings. Oviously got my wires mixed up ops:

So with the iRiver, you both have to use the line out I take it? I have an iPod but they are pants at recording so I hear!

Thanks again, I look forward to playing some more

Dave

the downside of this irvier aproach is that there is still 2 a/d conversions taking place. which is kinda unnecassary. Unless hte iriver has spdif in and yer md has spdif out ofcourse (in which i case i take my words back immediately)

Anton
the downside of this irvier aproach is that there is still 2 a/d conversions taking place. which is kinda unnecassary.

I may be wrong, but I think the only A/D conversion is occuring in the iRiver. The MD is only being used as an analog pre-amp. As we're not actually recording on to MD disk, there's no A/D in the MD that we actually make use of. (Fingers firmly crossed).

Yes, signal path is:

MS907 -> MZ-N10 mic in -> MZ-N10 line-out -> iRiver line-in

The MZ-N10 has a combined line-out / headphone socket, with a menu option to choose usage.

Mike

mmm, i see how that works, but why the need for the MD? would a mic with power not be enough to go straight into the iRiver?

iRiver doesnt have a mike preamp, just a line in

ahh, so the power (battery) on the mic isnt a preamp then? soooo much to learn... hock:

Hi there,
I have been using Audacity to tinker with my samples. I had a kettle boil, made a cuppa etc and thought would be a good start for me as the sample has some loud noise and quieter noises too. Of course, during the quieter bits the background "hiss" is very noticeable.

I tried the Hi pass Low pass thing, but i cant seem to get it right. I used the Noise Removal tool, but that creates rather nasty distortion (but does remove noise exceptionally well). I think having a rather noisey PC isnt helping me isolate artifacts in the sample either, so I will have to get some closed headphones i think.

Any other freeware or fairly cheap software recommendations that might be better than Audacity. It looks very comprehensive to me, but you guys know better of course :wink:

Cheers!