Small (But Good?) Part 5 (1 Viewer)

[Jon.Bryant]

Well not that small, but I have finally tried rigging up the Zoom F3 to my Telinga parabolic mic. I used the Telinga tripod mount to attach a cheese plate then cable tied the recorder to the cheese plate with a foam pad sandwiched between the recorder and the plate (see photo below).



Thoughts so far are;

Likes

1. Small format recorder with two phantom powered XLR inputs, which are required for either the Telinga twin science or the stereo mic options.
2. 32bit float recording, so no need (and no capability with the F3 ) to play with gain levels.
3. 32 bit float recording, so a blind faith that if I get reasonable close and check the meters, there will be no real need to monitor with headphones - so no getting in a tangle with cables, getting sweaty carry headphones around your neck, or having the ear cups of your old headphones disintegrate, abraded away by four days worth of stubble!
4. In the configuration the record button is easily located on the right side of the recorder, and in line of sight, so you can easily press record without taking your eye off the bird.
5. The meters (although fairly simplistic) are also in direct line of sight, so relatively easy to visually monitor the recording, again virtually without taking your eye off the bird.
6. Cables neatly held in location, so no accidental noise from cables accidentally touching the dish.
7. Easy to carry. I have attached a Black Rapid shoulder strap clip to the top of the cheese plate, and when the strap is clipped on, the equipment is well balanced and can be easily slung over the shoulder.

Dislikes

1. The battery compartment at the back of the Zoom F3 cannot be accessed when the recorder is secured in place using the two rails - and probably not if you use the tripod fixing. This means that when using Phantom Power you may want to steer away from rechargeable batteries, so that you don't potentially run out of juice and have to disassemble the rig and change batteries in the field. Probably best to either use a fresh set of the more expensive Lithium batteries to be on the safe side, if you are planning a long day in the field (or to use an external power bank strapped to the back of the cheese plate - I think a 10,000mAh battery would give you 12 hours recording so more than enough, and would be easy to recharge without dissembling everything.).
2. The setup is unbalanced when the mic is held in certain angles, meaning you have to tighten you grip on the handle, which could introduce noise. This is not a fault of the F3, but more to do with connection to the Telinga tripod bracket. A better solution may be to have a C shaped bracket made, so that the recorder sits directly above the handle.
3. Again not a Zoom issue, but despite my hopes that I could do away with audio monitoring, it was not that easy to aim the parabola well at birds singing from cover.

I haven't had much opportunity to test the setup yet, but attached are two recordings from a quick session yesterday morning - some aircraft noise and the tern and gull colony in the background explains the slight (but odd) background noises.

 

[leonardo_simon]

Very nice review and recordings
Thanks

 

[Jon.Bryant]

As an update, users of Raven software may find some issues with using the F3. The recorder records in BWF format with the wav extension (and also can record wave files in iXML format).

BWF files currently cannot be opened in Raven, so the work around is to convert the files in another piece of software (say Audacity) thereby adding another step to your workflow.

The issue is not unique to the F3, but the limited file format options on the F3 does make a workaround by playing with recorder options currently unachievable.

Hopefully Raven will be updated at some point to read BWF format files, which would resolve the issue.

The issue does not seem to impact workflow with most popular DAW software, which I understand can normally read BWF files - but perhaps worth double checking your software prior to considering the F3.

 

[Lazarus Taxon]

Thanks for the short review Jon. I've been thinking about the same setup. Do you already have any new recordings?

 

[steinn]

I use the F3 in a hip-bag and EM-66 in blimp or a Telinga, could be cumbersome in darkness to find the record-button in a hurry.The only buttons needed is on/off and record>Hold No trouble to edit to 24bit wav or mp3 in Audacity which is free online.
Stein

 

[Tedb4]

Anyone else using a setup like this?

 

[robert mckay]

Brilliant! I'm very tempted to get an F3 for my Telinga after seeing this. Having everything self-contained, with the recorder attached to the parabola, where you can easily see it, is a revelation. I love the idea of using 32-bit float audio, and not needing to fiddle with gain levels.
I wonder if it would feel less unbalanced in your hand if you mounted the F3 below the Telinga tripod adapter, instead of above it?
You could mount your phone there too, using something like this:

https://www.campkinscameras.com/leofoto-pc-90ii-phone-holder/

If you got the Zoom BTA-1bluetooth adapter for the F3 (around $50), you could then use Zoom's phone app to control the F3.
Using the touch-screen from your phone would make it easier to start and stop recording and to navigate the F3's menu. It would also give you a much bigger, brighter display of sound levels, which might make it easier to use the sound levels to line the parabola up with the bird.
If you then used a cord to connect the line out from the F3, directly into your phone, you could use the phone's speaker to listen to playbacks of recordings in the field if you wanted to - or maybe even try bluetooth earbuds connected to the phone, as an alternative to headphones. It might also be useful to have the output from the F3 running directly into the Merlin app on the phone. This would provide sonograms and easily accessible backup recordings on the phone. The bird species' names would be automatically labelled with the time-of-day on the Merlin app's file names. This could be very useful, when hunting through lots of recordings downloaded from the F3 when you get home
If all of that worked well and if you didn't need to touch the F3 to use it, you could then maybe mount the F3 sideways or backwards, which might make it easier to remove it from the setup, when you need to change the batteries.

 

[BIRDERSMS]

I am using the F3 since 2023 with a Wildtronics PRO Stereo Amplified Parabolic Reflector Microphone and since this year for a project in the neotropics with the Wildtronics MONO PRO with a featherlight parabolic 22" dish. Since the latter has one free XLR connector, I use that for one of my Wildtronics Micro Mic XLR mics. This is a nice combination, to add in the field comments and monitor proximity soundscape. I promise to upload more on XC soon.

Happy Recording and Identification!

Best from Vienna, Martin / bird.at