Jose Arcas nature-artist here with a “naturesound.it Plug In Power parabolic microphone” and Tascam DR05x.

Here on Youtube, Marc Namblard using a naturesound parabolic stereo microphone (see for it on Ebay.it).

Here on Facebook

I received this astonishing recording from my friend Grègory Chamming’s.
Thanks Grègory!
You have the word…

Hi Marco. I tell myself that we are fragile on this Earth… Yesterday, for the third time in my life, I had a “stormy” experience… I love thunderstorms, they fascinate me, and as soon as one breaks out, I feel “electric”, and that attracts me, and I’m going to see… So yesterday, I was sitting in a meadow, waiting for the storm to come… It’s coming from the north-east. Strong, more and more powerful. After a few minutes, before I could anticipate it, a bolt of lightning struck, and a few milliseconds later there was a great “Tsaaac!” in the air, barely a hundred metres from me… I found myself propelled by the phenomenal power of the lightning, to the ground, backwards, on my back. I could feel my heart racing and starting to beat very hard, just after it seemed to stop… I threw everything on the floor, and with a lot of pain, ran to take refuge in my van, parked 50m away. I think I was lucky again…

recorded in Cubières, my village, LOZERE – 28 05 2023 at about 2pm – Zoom F3 + TETA microphone
Many thanks to Marc Namblard for 32-bit floating-point processing.

An exciting soundscape with birdsong and thunderstorm Grégory CAMMING’S.
TETA Microphone and Zoom F3 recorder.

UNIVERSITY OF PAVIA – RESEARCHERS ‘NIGHT
September 30, 2022

Presentazione del Dr Gianni Pavan alla Notte dei Ricercatori a Pavia per illustrare i temi della bioacustica e dell’ecoacustica. Con ascolto di suoni di molte specie, dalle megattere a cervi, uccelli canori, anfibi e anche insetti. Con dimostrazione degli strumenti per registrare e visualizzare i suoni, tra cui la parabola Mid Side realizzata da naturesound.it e anche l’UltraMic 250k, microfono ultrasonico USB prodotto in Italia da Dodotronic che con il software di analisi e visualizzazione SeaPro (realizzato e sviluppato da G. Pavan al CIBRA dell’Università di Pavia) ci fa “vedere” e “sentire” in tempo reale anche gli ultrasuoni di pipistrelli e ortotteri.

A few days ago, I received from Ivano Pelicella, owner of Dodotronic, the new HiSound Mono EVO parabolic microphone, equipped with 4 x AOM capsules. I report here my impressions of use, as well as some practical tests carried out both with a metronome comparing this Mono EVO version with the Stereo 1+1 AOM capsules version, and using the Mono EVO live with some target bird species (more a little cricket).

Below are recordings of various species, including Long-tailed Tit, Common Nightingale, Marsh Cricket, Common Pheasant, Blackbird.

I am not a fan of mono type recording, and I love stereo recording, whatever it is. That said, let’s move on to analyze what emerged from the use of this new parabolic microphone.
The first highlight is the gain of 4 dB using the Mono EVO compared to the well-performing HiSound Stereo. This is logical since in the stereo version the signal received by the single side capsule positioned on the baffle disc comes roughly from half a parabolic disc. In the mono version, the signal comes from the whole parabolic dish, so there is a doubling of the signal compared to the version with the stereo separator disc. However, it must be considered that this separator disc also has a signal increase function following the PZM effect (Pressure Zone Microphone).
Therefore, for a use that does not concern the recording of Soundscapes, this Mono EVO version is particularly interesting if you want to make recordings to be used later for some specific study involving sonographic analysis (spectrograms etc.). Furthermore, users interested in so-called NFC (Night Flight Calls) of birds, will certainly benefit of this specific microphone configuration.

In this few days, I tried to make recordings including the widest range of frequencies.
So on Long-tailed Tit (frequencies about 7000 Hz), Common Nightingale (to consider the peaks that can go into distortion, instead they hold perfectly here), Marsh Cricket (about 20 meters away, a very small cricket of 5-7 mm, with frequencies around 6 KHz), flight of Common Pheasant (to stay also in the medium-low frequencies).
Finally the Common Blackbird, a classic test as far as I’m concerned.

I just have to test the Mono EVO dish in the short term on particular small cicadas with an almost ultrasonic call…

I tested a ZOOM AM7 Mid-Side microphone for Android, by inserting it inside a 53 cm diameter paraolic disc, using a USB-C Male/Female cable.
For this Recording the REC Volume wheel was set almost to its maximum, at the 9 of 10 Level position, so part of the background noise is due to the very high setting. There is a bit of handling noise.

Samsung A30s – cable USB-C female to male – Zoom AM7 Android Microphone

Below are some pics of how I made, through 3D printing, the casing to insert the ZOOM AM7 Mid Side microphone.