Advice on equipment for soundscapes (1 Viewer)

I have been using a Sony PCM-M10 without any external equipment for a year and I'm fairly happy with it. It does give noticeable noise though when recording bird songs at a distance. Now I would like to invest in external mics etc and hope for some good advice. The Telinga stuff just mentioned in the previous post (by "buzzard12") is one option.

My main interest is soundscapes (e.g. catching the the bird morning "orchestra" inside a forest) and not so much individual species (but occasionally that as well), and so I wonder if a parabola is the right thing since it its very directional? What other alternative is there? An omni-mic with a pre-amp?

I am not at all experienced in this and basic advices are very welcome!

the Telinga isn't the right tool for soundscapes. You're better off with a good MS rig, a spaced NOS pair or a binaural system, depending on how you expect your listeners to hear yoru works (headphones or speakers/radio broadcast).

If noise is an issue, you probably need better mics. A spaced pair in a forest location gives awesome results, birds willing, or couse

ermine said:

the Telinga isn't the right tool for soundscapes. You're better off with a good MS rig, a spaced NOS pair or a binaural system, depending on how you expect your listeners to hear yoru works (headphones or speakers/radio broadcast).

If noise is an issue, you probably need better mics. A spaced pair in a forest location gives awesome results, birds willing, or couse

Click to expand...

As well as a spaced pair, another option that works well is using a pair of mics placed in an X-Y pattern on a stereo bar. This takes some of the guess work out of the overlapping of the recording patterns of the mics. Wind protection is a must, as are good preamps with lots of clean, useable gain.

I thought perhaps some people on here who are looking for ideas on how to record birds, wildlife and nature ambiences might find a tutorial I put together on the subject handy to read. While it isn't a fully comprehensive text on the topic, it does cover quite a bit on the basics of microphone and recorder selection, and tips on what equipment generally works well in some common scenarios. So incase anyone feels like a read, I shall post a link to it here:
Field Recording Of Birds, Wildlife and Nature Sounds