Ortolan Bunting

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Emberiza hortulana

Ortolan bunting song.

Recorded using a mid MONO parabolic microphone – 2 x Primo EM172 caps and a 33 cm dish.
Filmed with a Sony Nex6 + adapter and a Lens Nikon 400 IF-ED 5,6.

Special thanks to Gastone Pivatelli.

32-bit Float – Helicopter recording

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This evening I was trying to record with a setup that I experiment with from time to time in parabola: a mixed stereo + mono baffle (see here for the original setup), using two cheap Zoom recorders: the old H1 first version for the STEREO part and the latest version H1e Essential for the MONO part, recording the signal with both recorders simultaneously.
Coincidentally (and fortunately!), a Firefighters helicopter passed exactly over my head, at an estimated height of about 3-400 meters.
I thus had the opportunity to further experiment with the ability of the 32-bit float system to compensate for an excessively high incoming signal, allowing me to restore the signal in the correct way and no longer distorted by audio clipping.
Nothing to do for the file recorded with the old H1, distorted originally and consequently even after an attempt at normalization (obviously failed).
The choice to record in stereo mode with H1 and in MONO with H1e was completely random, perhaps also due to the fact that H1e allows you to choose between stereo and mono modes.

Below are the Waveforms and the relative audio files.

H1e Essential – original recording

H1e Essential – Normalized recording

H1 – original recording

H1 – Normalized recording

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To simplify the visualization unrecoverable H1 trace, I insert the below image with normalization at -6dB, where the destroyed peaks are perfectly visible.


32-bit float and nature recordings

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It may happen, particularly when recording in parabola, that a part of the file is recorded clipped due to the impulsive signal being too high.
Here are two calls I recorded with the Zoom H1e Essential and a DIY stereo parabola with 1+1 AOM 5024 capsules.
The first is the call of a European Blackbird emitted in flight from left to right; the second is the call of a Great Spotted Woodpecker recorded while it is entering the hole of the nest. In both there is the originally recorded signal with a clipped part, immediately followed by the normalized part recovered in post production via DAW.
As you can see and hear, with 32-bit float there is the possibility of recovering the signal simply by normalizing it.

Jose Arcas – Spagna

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

Parabolic Stereo Microphone NATURESOUND.IT – in action

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

Here on Facebook

GRèGORY CHAMMING’S IN THE STORM

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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.


Grégory CHamming’s TETA Mics Recording in Limestone plateau – France

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

UNIVERSITà DI PAVIA – LA NOTTE DEI RICERCATORI

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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.

Earsight Stereo Mic’s Ball Setup

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A few weeks ago, I bought a pair of Earsight microphones 48V XLR plugs. After testing them with the new Zoom F3, I found that, as it was logical to expect, the stereo separation with these two omnidirectional capsules was not great, despite having adopted a self-built positioning system with the capsules angled 120° and 17 cm apart from each other.
So, I decided to create a separation by inserting a 12 cm diameter sphere, made up of a ball for gymnastic postural exercises produced in Germany, the BlackRoll Ball12, whose material seems to me perfect for the project.
As a first test, being a season in which the singing of birds even during is practically nil, I tried to quickly record a few minutes of nocturnal orthoptera chorus: Oecanthus pellucens, Eupholidoptera chabrieri schmidti, Modicogryllus burdigalensis.

MONO-STEREO SETUP FOR PARABOLIC MICROPHONE

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People often debate the use of mono or stereo microphones inside a parabolic dish. This I have already mentioned here.
In summary: some prefer a mono recording for a “clean” use with spectrogram analysis, others prefer to obtain a stereo recording to have a pleasant soundscape. However, a stereo recording does not exclude the possibility of being able to use only one channel of the two to still obtain a good spectrogram.
Personally, I have always thought that the best thing would be to have both opportunities.
This is why I thought of designing and manufacturing (for my personal use) a Mono/Stereo microphone baffle to be inserted in a parabolic dish, which gives the possibility to separatly connect one of the two configurations when using a two-channel recorder, or both configurations at the same time if using a mixer/recorder with at least three channels..

Above the project drawing of the baffle and below the 3D printed realization of the microphone assembly.
Stereo capsules L-R; M = mono capsule facing towards the inside of the dish.

I asked about adding the two signals Mono+Stereo to Jules Ryckebusch who replied:

“The signals are adding. So that gives you, in theory 2X signal that works out to 6dB. It’s what people do when putting four mics in an array too. The correlated signal adds 6db and the uncorrelated noise only adds 3dB so there is an improvement in signal to noise ratio”.

Here a quick audio test using a metronome

below European robins at dawn (mono + stereo – Sound Devices 302 mixer + Tascam DR05X)

DODOTRONIC HISOUND MONO EVO 4 AOM CAPSULES

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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…