Recording with HiMD: tutorial? (1 Viewer)

[HouseFinch]

Just now I've been trying to record things with my new HiMD recorder, using my ATR55 Audio Technica mic, but I seem to be having volume issues. The recordings turn out too quiet, even when 'Mic Sens' is set to high(when listened to through headphones connected to the recorder): I tested the recorder by starting a recording and banging on my desk.

So, when recording bird sounds, absolutely nothing can be heard on resultant sound clips. This is when I'm using the HiMD with just its gumpack Ni-MH battery, and not with the dry battery case also attached: does that affect it? Or is it something different entirely, that I'm missing? I'm a newbie to HiMD's.

 

[griffin]

Are you setting the recording volume to "Manual" ? Then, turn up the vol. to 26/27 and it should give good input volume. However, even on "Automatic" recording level you should get some level on to disc ???

I have a NH900 too, and basically the same mic, thoughan OEM Monocor version.

PS. At the risk of sounding patronising ( which I am not ) make sure you have the mic plugged into the Mic in and not the line in/optical. Or even phones !!! 4 years at music college and I STILL do sh;it like that on a bad day !! ( don't tell anyone ).

Linz

 

[ermine]

As well as Linz's suggestions, it may be worth trying the mic with your previous setup to see if it is loud enough. I find it too easy to leave my cheap copy of the ATR55 with the switch on, and then scratch my head after a few days why this damn thing is low gain :-O

What happens if you transfer the recordings you have to the PC? Audition will show you if you have low signal strength on the WAV as the waveform will look like a nearly flat line.

 

[HouseFinch]

PS. At the risk of sounding patronising ( which I am not ) make sure you have the mic plugged into the Mic in and not the line in/optical. Or even phones !!! 4 years at music college and I STILL do sh;it like that on a bad day !! ( don't tell anyone ).
Linz

LOL, I made sure not to put the mic in the wrong input, which is defiitely something I could do if I'm not careful. In fact, about a week ago, I was going to make a recording of an unrecognized bird sound, so I turned the mic on and started recording in Adobe Audition. But, me being an absentminded idiot, after the bird went away I discovered I'd forgotten to plug the cord into my laptop! Boy, some good that'll do! :'D

And actually Ermine, even when I've used my laptop with my mic, I had to amplify the recording by 32 decibels to get it where I wanted it, even in the 'Tele' setting, which is what I always use. I'll admit that I have accidentally left it on several times. Maybe I just need to replace the batteries in my ATR55: I'll feel pretty stupid if it is as simple as that!

 

[ermine]

And actually Ermine, even when I've used my laptop with my mic, I had to amplify the recording by 32 decibels to get it where I wanted it, even in the 'Tele' setting, which is what I always use. I'll admit that I have accidentally left it on several times. Maybe I just need to replace the batteries in my ATR55: I'll feel pretty stupid if it is as simple as that!

32dB seems a little on the high side - assuming that is, that this was the laptop mic input, and the recording mixer gain was set to flat out.

The ATR55 is probably designed for dialog usage with camcorders. A lot of birdsong is probably as loud at the beak as someone talking, but you are usually further away from the bird that from a human speaker in a video. The HiMD inputs are sensitive, however, so I would expect you should be able to drive it full scale with a bird in your backyard.

Try laptop recording some dialog at 3 feet, then try swapping the batteries and recording again from that distance. This type of mic does first go low gain and noisy as the batteries fade, before losing output totally.

 

[griffin]

It's gotta be dead batteries ? Or a fault with the mic.


Linz

 

[HouseFinch]

I just tried changing the battery, and I recorded the domestic Zebra Finches I have in my room, using my laptop: same deal. I can hear the birds fresh from the recording but only barely, I still have to amplify it. On the HiMD I have to set the volume at its highest to actually hear my finches: this was after recharging the Ni-MH battery, attaching the optional AA battery, and replacing the AA battery in my ATR55. I'm as clueless as ever.:brains:

Yesterday, I attached my old cheap mic to the HiMD and got the same results. How loud are resultant recordings meant to be? Like if you record a bird call, then stop the recording, and immediately play it back through headphones?

I know it's not my hearing: I'm completely deaf in my left ear(always was from birth, being a premature baby; this is also the cause of my poor vision)but my right ear is perfectly fine. The birds are as noisy as they have been. :'D

I just had a crazy thought: since my mic is mono, would the sound come in through only one headphone, or at least quieter on one side?

 

[ermine]

I just had a crazy thought: since my mic is mono, would the sound come in through only one headphone, or at least quieter on one side?

Yes - you are right. That's exactly what should happen. It is usually the left channel which carries the mono signal. If you look at the miniplug on the mic and compare it with a stereo plug like the one on your headphones you will see there are two metal pieces on the mono plug, and three on the stereo one. What this means is the right hand input to your MD is shorted to ground when using this mic, and the signal is sent to the left-hand input.

This is no problem once you have transferred your recording to the PC. You should see that on the waveform display. The left track is usually shown above the right, and you should see the trace on top with lots of action and the lower trace almost flatlining. To put the track on a CD, Audition will allow you to duplicate the left-hand track onto the right-hand track. If you just want to save to hard disk and play from the PC, use Adobe Audition to kill off the right-hand channel, which will save you half the file size with zero loss in signal quality

In the field, to match your hearing, there's no rule against swapping your headphones round so you moniter the left-chand channel which carries the wanted signal with your right ear, so you can still use the advantages of the MD portability and line up the mic on your birds. You can get 1/8 inch socket adaptors from Radio Shack to do this mono-> stereo duplication in hardware. However, I'd do this in software. Audition will do the job at no extra cost and saves you having extra lumps sticking out of the MD sockets and putting unneccessary strain on them.

You shouldn't really be having gain issues of having to boost things so much, which seems common to both your HiMD rig and laptop.

This is a straight field recording​

of zebra finches in a garden centre. It isn't gain equalised or processed in any way, jut as transferred from my HiMD, converted to mono and to mp3. These were recorded last year with a cheap and nasty Chinese copy of your ATR55, and the cage was reasonably large, standing the height of a man from the ground and about 5 feet across. The birds were in the middle, so about 2 feet from the mic. There's enough things wrong with this recording, but a shortage of level is not one of them.

It's hard to say how loud the signal should be through headphones. It depends on - the original sound, the record level setting (you are using manual level, right?), the replay volume setting, which is independent of the record level, and the sensitivity of the headphones. The replay volume in the HiMD headphones should be exactly the same as the monitor volume in the HiMD headphones was while recording, provided you don't change the HiMD replay volume between record and replay. With everything flat out the sound from the headphones hsould be louder than as heard through the air unless you have exceptionally insensitive headphones. I can get feedback from the headphone leakeage through the mic if I turn everything up, which isn't nice at all :-C

 

[HouseFinch]

Woah! I just went over to my HiMD and grabbed the headphones and put them on backwards, and pressed 'Play'. I could hear, at perfect volume, the recording I made earlier of my finches(this had been recorded at the 'Auto' volume setting). This whole time, I was listening through the wrong damn side! I feel like such an idiot. *laughs*

With my laptop recordings, however, I always checked off Stereo instead of Mono when my microphone was connected, so I think the channels are automatically duplicated: when I look at the sound files, the channel lines both look the same. Also, when I wear the phones backwards, the sound loudness is the same. But with the HiMD, wearing them backwards made a huge difference.

I'm happy that the mystery is solved, even if I'm left feeling rather embarrassed.

 

[ermine]

Yay - it's easy to get caught on the hop with things like that

Looks like you're all set now - get out there and get some birds - they're chirping more and more now

 

[HouseFinch]

Yay - it's easy to get caught on the hop with things like that

Looks like you're all set now - get out there and get some birds - they're chirping more and more now

The other day I went out and recorded a House Finch singing: he was high up in a tree, and we have a bank in our back yard, which is above a view of the Columbia River. Subsequently, his song sounded almost ethereal, as it echoed through all that space. One day I'll post a pic here of that view, and perhaps the recording itself, once I have it in stereo form.

And, I hate to bother you again, but I have a few more questions: somehow, I seem to benefit better from having someone experienced with HiMD's telling me how to do something, than looking in the manual.

1. When recording, the numbers on the display show up as 00:00, then move up the scale. However, once it reaches 00:60, it starts at 00:00 once again. I remember being in a part of the menu, and I accidentally changed it to that setting, and now I can't remember how to change it back to minutes!

2. Also whilst recording, the HiMD makes a new track at 1-minute intervals. Is there a way I could set it so that it produces a track once I stop recording, thus making a new track with each recording session? I.e., if i recorded for five minutes, then stopped, the five minutes would become a new track, then the next session would make a new track, then so on and so forth.(Edit: I have figured out how to do this, but I don't know if this will change the displayed numbers as mentioned in my first question).

3. What is the best way of setting the amplitude for the mono tracks when converting them to stereo? In the instructions for Adobe Audtion, it mentions volumes for each channel(in the Menu<Convert Sample Type command). I imagine the numbers would be the same on both channels, I just don't know what the number is.

 

[ermine]

The other day I went out and recorded a House Finch singing: he was high up in a tree, and we have a bank in our back yard, which is above a view of the Columbia River. Subsequently, his song sounded almost ethereal, as it echoed through all that space.

That's what it's all about I'd be interested to hear your eponymous bird - the mp3 is fine in mono, as the source was in mono. Bet it's a new world no longer being tethered to the PC/laptop!

3. What is the best way of setting the amplitude for the mono tracks when converting them to stereo? In the instructions for Adobe Audtion, it mentions volumes for each channel(in the Menu<Convert Sample Type command). I imagine the numbers would be the same on both channels, I just don't know what the number is.

1 and 2 are related - you ought to get the counter counting up in minutes:seconds format now. What was happening before is it would get to 59 seconds and a new track would be created by the autosplit function, counting up from 0 again. The autosplit function was sort of useful in the old days when you couldn't get your data off MDs but has no real reason to exist nowadays. It makes it harder to reassemble a recording on a PC. It was useful for say lecture recordings where you could easily step forwards 5min at a time on the old format MD.

Because your recording is from a mono microphone, you should transfer the recording to PC, and then convert to mono. Keep 100% of the channel the recording is on, and 0% of the channel it isn't. Which channel should be obvious from the waveform trace - one has the action, the other not. I'd guess at the Left channel which is usually the case

Save the mono recording - it will save you 50% of the disk space for zero loss of quality. If the mic has a plug that puts the mono signal on both channels then simply take 100% of the left and 0% of the right.

You can create mono mp3s - that will save some, though not half, of the data rate needed for a given quality.

You only need to create a stereo wav again if you wish to put the sounds on a CD - then simply convert the mono to stereo, allocating the L and R tracks each 100% of the original mono track. If putting on CD is all you want to do with your recordings and you don't want to archive on the PC you can simply copy the channel with the action over to the channel without the action. I don't have Audition but it was based on Syntrillium CoolEdit, which calls this Channel Mixer under Transform -> Amplitude for some obscure reason.

This will place the mono signal midway between the speakers on a correctly adjusted audio system, which is how mono signals are conventionally handled.

 

[HouseFinch]

That's what it's all about I'd be interested to hear your eponymous bird - the mp3 is fine in mono, as the source was in mono. Bet it's a new world no longer being tethered to the PC/laptop!

You can say that again: it's absolutely wonderful. Anytime, anywhere, just break out the HiMD and mic and start recording. This is the life! :t:

Here's the mono mp3 of the House Finch: House Finch, etc.

The file has that name because if one listens closely, a number of other species can be heard: a Spotted Towhee, Song Sparrow, Chestnut-backed Chickadees, and a Cedar Waxwing(that high, "seee" call). I only wish the House Finch had kept up his song longer!

 

[ermine]

The file has that name because if one listens closely, a number of other species can be heard: a Spotted Towhee, Song Sparrow, Chestnut-backed Chickadees, and a Cedar Waxwing(that high, "seee" call). I only wish the House Finch had kept up his song longer!

That's a nice performance - I like the trill/wheeze at the end. I'm not familiar with any of the species. In the finches I am used to, most commonly chaffinch and greenfinch, I hear a distinct unharmonically related tones to parts of their song. I didn't hear that in the housefinch, which generally sounded sweeter than finches I'm used to.

Of course, now you'll have to find a way of cataloging your field recordings to preserve the context and find them again. You'll be making a lot more of them now