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Birdmic (3 Viewers)
- Thread starter Guwi
- Start date
Jon.Bryant
Well-known member
The Birdmic is just a small parabola with an interface for a phone, which you use as the recorder - on this basis it would work with your Android phone. I think it would also work with any other recorder with a 3.5mm minijack input, but I am not sure if the device has it's own battery or you can use PiP from the recorder.
Another option is the Dodotronics Hi-Sound Compact, although they seem to have withdrawn the old phone interface, so you can only use it with a recorder with a stereo PiP 3.5mm input socket. I think they are bringing out a new interface that allows you to split the signal, so you can monitor the sound through headphones at the same time as using Merlin on your phone - I believe it was previously either, or.
Getting technical, but the gain of a parabola is related to (Dish Diameter/Wavelength)^2. This means that there is no gain where the wavelength exceeds the dish diameter - the bigger the dish, the lower this lower frequency threshold is. Also, as gain is related to D^2, a relatively small increase in dish size makes a big difference in gain (a dish with a diameter 1.4x as big as the Birdmic will create circa 2x the gain - all things being equal).
This is why there are larger parabolas (see Telinga and Dodotronics), although they tend to be expensive.
I have a Hi-Sound Compact, that I use for holidays as it is easy to carry, and think it is pretty good - the mics are super sensitive in any case, and for higher pitched birds the dish creates a nice bit of extra gain.
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My main use of the satellite dish/microphone is to amplify bird sounds in order to be able to detect and listen to birds. I have severely impaired hearing but have actually managed to hear significantly better with a simple satellite dish with built-in binoculars, price about 60 USD. It is certainly not professional but works well and helps me a lot and it also pinpoints the bird quite easily. I am a birdwatcher which means that I carry binoculars, spotting scopes and a camera, i.e. very common equipment. I therefore want a small simple equipment for sound as well. I have no need to use Merlin because I identify species without helpThe reason for my question is that I discovered a new satellite dish Bird Mic from Bird fox that looks a little better and wanted an opinion from someone who has tested it.As I said I am looking for a small simple and affordable amplifier that can be connected to an android or type Zoom with cable or with Bluetooth and that allows live listening (listening in) which does not work with smartphones.google translate
My main use of the satellite dish/microphone is to amplify bird sounds in order to be able to detect and listen to birds. I have severely impaired hearing but have actually managed to hear significantly better with a simple satellite dish with built-in binoculars, price about 60 USD. It is certainly not professional but works well and helps me a lot and it also pinpoints the bird quite easily. I am a birdwatcher which means that I carry binoculars, spotting scopes and a camera, i.e. very common equipment. I therefore want a small simple equipment for sound as well. I have no need to use Merlin because I identify species without helpThe reason for my question is that I discovered a new satellite dish Bird Mic from Bird fox that looks a little better and wanted an opinion from someone who has tested it.As I said I am looking for a small simple and affordable amplifier that can be connected to an android or type Zoom with cable or with Bluetooth and that allows live listening (listening in) which does not work with smartphones.google translate
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Jon.Bryant
Well-known member
A while back a demo of birdmic was posted on the forum - see [thread here]. This gives you an idea of what the small parabola can do.
The marketing stuff on the NHBS website says 'To get up and running, simply connect the interface to the dish. No cables are needed as the specially designed interface has an inbuilt 3.5mm male-to-female jack. Headphones can then be connected directly to the interface for live monitoring.'
So looks like the interface allows you to monitor and also record to a smart phone. This is a bit different to a 'normal' recorder, where you monitor the signal in via the recorder headphone socket.
There has also been quite a few post recently about enhancing sound if you have hearing loss, so may be worth looking down the recent post under this section (i.e. Bird Sound Recording). My wife only has moderate hearing loss, but she has found that hearing aids are excellent - at one stage she couldn't hear Grasshopper Warbler, but now she can even hear Firecrests. We paid for her hearing aids, but I do know that can be fine tuned with 20 programmable frequency bands, which I suspect for birdwatching could be important.
