Let's See Effective Sound Recording Rigs!

In Germany you can buy this for many years:

https://www.ohrwurmaudio.eu/ohrwurm-hifi-stereo.html

In Germany you can buy this for many years:

https://www.ohrwurmaudio.eu/ohrwurm-hifi-stereo.html

There are a few posts in this forum that talk about Wolfgang Winne’s Ohrwurm/Earworm mikes, and he has posted here himself.

As discussed earlier in this thread, DPA is now selling a headset that mounts two DPA 4060 mikes in your ears. There are a fair number of discussions on the Internet about using 4060s as binaural mikes, with various DIY ways of mounting them. DPA mikes are popular for this purpose, but one could use any brand.

Mr. Winne’s product does the same thing, but his mikes, at about €200 for two, are less expensive than DPA’s.

My friend Q, now sporting a proper face mask and wind protection for his delicate ears.

ku100-mask-car.jpg (421.18 KiB) Viewed 5319 times

A few posts up, Kim raised a question about the width of the sound field in one of the Radio France videos made with the Neumann mike. The screenshot and video below may make my response about that clearer. Post-recording, a Radio France sound engineer probably manipulated the width of the sound field to his personal taste.

The screenshot shows a Logic Pro X session with three key tools for managing a Neumann binaural track that I recorded today. These tools can be used to control both the width of the sound field and the horizontal and vertical placement of sounds. Left to right:

1. Logic Pro X Binaural Panning (part of Logic’s Surround Sound toolkit);
2. Sennheiser AMBEO Orbit;
3. iZotope Insight 2 (sound field display).

Logic-binaural-2.jpg (179.99 KiB) Viewed 5312 times

This brief, one minute YouTube video from a Pro Tools session demonstrates the general idea, using Sennheiser’s AMBEO Orbit to manipulate an audio clip of a helicopter:

In reality, I’ll use iZotope RX to analyse the left and right channels of the track and carry out any corrective processing, and use an equaliser to quieten sounds below 80Hz to 100Hz, before I even get to these tools.

It was quite breezy today, so I used the top halves of two Cinela Leo wind protectors. Turns out that the Cinela fabric is pretty non-stick. The bond with the red gaffer tape in the photo works, but barely, and ordinary packing tape turned out to be worse. I'll try medical/bandaid tape next.

The important thing is that the Leo halves worked really well, no fur needed.

IMG_0488.jpeg (136.38 KiB) Viewed 5267 times

Having now used the Neumann binaural mike for five days, I've concluded that it is very sensitive to wind. The kind of protection shown in the photo is necessary except in close to dead calm conditions.

Earlier today, B&H uploaded this 45 minute Insta360 presentation on Virtual Reality. Insta360 is an important player at several price points. I'm trying to get my head around 360, but when one gets beyond really basic capture I think that both the image and sound sides are pretty daunting.

Just on sound, Sennheiser's AMBEO VR mike (see earlier posts) has a significant processing learning curve. I think that it's suited to ambient recording, but this means additional spot recording to make VR work. I'm satisfied, based on working with Neumann's KU100, that binaural recording is a lot easier to deal with, but it's quite different from VR.

Anyway, here's the Insta360 presentation. The YouTube description includes time stamps:

I returned the Neumann Dummy Head (their description) this afternoon. If I had a spare US$8400, I'd purchase one in a flash. It's a great mike, lots of fun to use.

As it is, my stereo future is AB Spaced, with a centre mike in some cases, and ORTF. I do want to try a Jecklin Disk, but my rental house doesn't have one and right now I'm not about to purchase or try to make one. There are also two Jecklin Disk specifications, which are quite different. As popular as MidSide is, I've never seen it as an option because I don't see buying a figure of eight mike just for that purpose. Having decided that I think that monaural compatibility is now obsolete, for me there isn't really an argument for MidSide anyway.

Since the release of Logic 10.5 last week, I've spent some time playing with the new sampler, which has obvious uses for sound design in addition to music composition. Christian Henson, composer and co-founder of Spitfire Audio, has said that the predecessor, the ESX24, was the best DAW sampler out there, and that the new one is essentially a more user-friendly update. I found the ESX24 a bit intimidating, and Henson is right - the new sampler is much more intuitive.

Speaking of Spitfire Audio, and indeed sampling, Spitfire has just released a new BBC Symphony Orchestra sample library. I'm not a composer, and I only play the piano, but this is a very attractive library for anyone who's intrigued by the idea of playing around with an orchestra. The Pro version is US$1000 and the Core version is $450 ($750 and $350 until the end of the month), but there's also a quite capable Discover version for US$50, or for free if you're prepared to fill out a questionnaire about musical tastes, etc. I've purchased the Discover version, and I'm now thinking about Core :) Spitfire has also published excellent templates for the library for all the major DAWs.

The sampling was done by Jake Jackson, who is Spitfire's sound engineer and who is represented, for film work, by the late Sir George Martin's AIR Studios. in other words, he knows what he's doing. These days, the BBC Symphony itself has an excellent reputation.

If you muck around with music, worth checking out. This is a walk-through of the $50/free Discover version, which I think is about to become very popular with educators and people of modest means or, like me, modest aspirations:

This is a first look at Discover and Core by composer and music educator Guy Michelmore, who has now also uploaded a video about writing music with Discover. Mr. Michelmore is a bit of a character, so it's probably a good idea to check out his Wikipedia page before watching his video: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Michelmore

This is the first of two videos that Christian Henson, co-founder of Spitfire Audio, is making on Logic's new sampler. It's only worth watching if one is interested in manipulating sounds for sound design or music purposes. Also, Henson is an expert on the subject, and while it's interesting to watch his analysis, this is not a beginner's walkthrough. However, if you know a bit about sampling, it's a pretty interesting video. If you've never seen a Christian Henson video, it may be worth watching just for his style :)

At the end, Henson invites comments, especially in relation to features he my have missed given that this is his first go at the new sampler. A number of people obliged. It's perhaps worth noting that the Logic sampler that this replaces, and that Henson is used to using, has existed for 20 years. There may be a bit of breakup psychology going on :)

For those who aren't familiar with this stuff, his reference to Kontakt is to an important sampler by a company called Native Instruments.

By the way, Henson's choice of mike for his videos, as a guy who can afford any mike he wants, is an Electro-Voice RE20.

The Encounter, Simon McBurney's one-man show and experiment in binaural sound, using the Neumann KU100 mike discussed above, is being streamed until Friday at 10:00 p.m. London time/5:00 p.m. New York time.

In London, it's being streamed by The Barbican Theatre: https://www.barbican.org.uk/read-watch- ... fri-15-may

In New York, by Brooklyn's St. Ann's Warehouse: https://stannswarehouse.org/show/the-encounter/

Here's the New York Times review from the 2016 New York stage performance:

Review: ‘The Encounter’ Is a High-Tech Head Trip Through an Amazon Labyrinth
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/thea ... eview.html