Sampo Syreeni wrote:
On 2017-06-26, David Pickett wrote:
This whole business of low noise microphones and preamps is in my
experience a non-issue in the vast majority of cases. Very few
environments are quiet enough to be softer than the noise level of
most microphones.
Agreed, and thanks for pointing that aspect out aloud. Quite a number of
people -- myself in particular because I have very little on-field
experience -- tend to be swayed by minute theoretical disagreements
which have absolutely nothing to do with our two shared goals: the best
all-round practical signal chain possible, and the best sounding records
(in their many forms) achievable within its bounds.
I agree that in most cases the noise isn't a critical factor in recording.
However, here is an example of minority:
I recorded radio plays (monirty) in the Finnish language (minority) in
Finland
(minority). The Finnish population is just five million and about 10% of
the population
don't speak Finnish as their mother language. Some radio plays get just
20.000
listeners. (Though some plays I produced, got half a million. :-) )
Still, I tried to use Ambisonics in radio production for a period of
time in the 1990's.
At the best time I knew nine listeners, who had a decoder and a speaker
setup.
Minority! I could have phoned them all and informed about the next UHJ
transmission,
no need to put the information in the newspaper.
Anyway, the microphone wasn't the biggest problem in the production,
there were
many other other things, but very soon I noticed that I couldn't use the
Soundfield
microphones at all. Their self noise was too high. I was using the MK
IV, ST250
and the MK V.
It was much better to use single low noise mono microphones, such as the
Sennheiser MKH 30 and to place the signal into the soundfield by panning.
I often used stereo pairs to capture also the actors movements.
The Finnish Radio Drama is similar to other Scandinavian countries in
that actors
use a large variation in their speech. Sometimes they go very soft, less
than
whispering. This is not very common in Radio Drama in many parts of the
world.
Very often the actors just "read" loud.
However, using a Soundfield in a radio drama studio isn't very clever,
as there isn't
any special acoustics that would need to be recorded. It is much easier
to add
the room acoustics with a signal processor. I used a four channel output
Lexicon
and the Quantec Room Simulator.
Using the Soundfield in on-location recordings would have captured nice
acoustics,
but the Soundfields of that time were very clumsy to use in the field.
You couldn't
move with a Soundfield and follow the actors, as the suspension was
lousy and
caused noises and the windshields grew very large.
As a compromise, I recorded atmospheres on location without the actors
and mixed those into the play and that lead into good results. But took much
more time, which always wasn't available in radio production.
Eero
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