Steelflight said:
I don't understand why it would matter much on the recorder that I used if I am using a shotgun mic that collects sounds from 500 feet away. As long as I am picking up the sounds with the shotgun mic, won't it record fine onto any old digital voice recorder? I asked a guy about this at an audio store that sold mics and he said he didn't think it would matter much... just the sound quality might be a little worse, but in terms of sound magnitude it would be almost the same.
Some things can't be put into words. You gotta hear them. I went out yesterday lunchtime and recorded some long-tailed tits with my HiMD and simultaneously with my Olympus VN-120PC digital voicerecorder. Same birds, same distance.
http://www.suffolkbirds.co.uk/article/69/use-no-voicerecorders
I don't actually tell you which recording is which on that page, but basically if you can't tell which is the voice recorder and which is the proper recording I don't think that bird recording is for you
These little guys were about ten feet from me. Listen to the papery tone colour of the birds and the harsh distortion on the blackbird on the voice recorder version. Compare that with the lovely trilling sound that these little birds have on the other recording. Long-tailed tits tend to go around in flocks, and on the MD recording even though it is in mono you can hear the perspective of the near and far birds signalling to each other to keep the flock together.
The voice recorder is designed for a loud sound (you) speaking into the mic at close range - a couple of feet. Okay, so you are going to stick a parabolic mic in front which will help a bit. I'm not trying to rain on your parade for the hell of it, and I'm all for people going out there with whatever they have already got. There's a lot of fun and much challenge to be had going out recording the sounds of the natural world.
But one thing that does put newcomers off is spending a wad on kit that isn't up to the task and not getting decent results. They usually give up and come to the conclusion this isn't for them. Which is why I recorded that segment, so at least you can make your choice knowing
beforehand what you will do to the sound.
You may listen to the recording and decide that the papery travesty of the long-tails is good enough for you to recognize your owls, but at least you won't go into the project expecting your recording to sound much like the birds in real life
Before you buy a DVR, if you go that way, you should check the maximum recording time, which often isn't that long. They desgined to make notes in a meeting, and mine for instance has a max recording time of 45 minutes in high-quality mode. The low quality mode is absolutely worthless even for speech - I think it's only there so Olympus could claim two hours of recording on the spec.
