Does the ME66 pick up close sounds too? (1 Viewer)

myfriend has an ME66 and we were messing around with it and talking and whistling into it and the quality wasn't that good? it was on a hi-md in PCM format. we were about 10 feet away making sounds straight into it.

ok lemme rephrase. i dont know if the quality 'wasn't good' but it sure was a lot quieter than the cheapy cardioid mic i bought at radio shack for 50 bucks!

my last dumb question for the day...

which direction do we point the mic ? does it pick up directly in front of it? how come there are slots all over the sides? do i mount it pointing to the sky, or point it at my target like a gun?

thanks

Steelflight said:

ok lemme rephrase. i dont know if the quality 'wasn't good' but it sure was a lot quieter than the cheapy cardioid mic i bought at radio shack for 50 bucks!

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Interesting. The ME66 is unusually sensitive so I would not expect this to be the case. From your other comments I wonder if you were speaking into or across it. To test the sensitivity find a reasonably quiet outdoor location at least 10 yards away from walls, and place an FM radio tuned between stations to give hiss at a low level about 5 yards away. With each mic on a tripod about shoulder height record this sound and adjust manual recording levels to give the same reading. The microphones should be recording from exactly the same place, ie switch them on the tripod, and aim directly at the radio. After matching the levels to give same reading repeat the experiment with the radio off and record the ambient noise with the levels matched as for the radio. Provided your location is quiet enough I think you will hear the difference in hiss level easily enough. If you don't I would think there is a fault. It could be as simple as needing to change the battery in the K6 powering module - the mic loses sensitivity as this runs flat.

The ME66 should be aimed at the sound source. You can get a feel for the directivity by recording in the outdoor location, and take the FM radio with you. walk in an arc around the mic keeping a fixed distance from it, and say out loud the angle you are at. Thus when you are right on the boresight of the mic with it aimed at you this is 12 o'clock. when you are due left of it that is 9 o'clock and due right 3 o'clock.

You can get a quick and dirty feel for this by holding the mike at arms length and rotating it as you speak. You must do this in an outdoor location - because of the way shotgun mikes achieve their directivity they don't work well indoors, where reflections from walls etc screw up the phase cancellation principles (this is the purpose of the slots down the sides). You will lose most of the directionality and get odd colourations in tonality indoors because of this.