Name: 09 Double Rise by Phil Cunningham in celta
Duration: 3 min 39 s
Description: Some tracks from me and the lads.. happy times. Me, Foss Paterson, Davey Paton, Neil Hay, John Henderson, Kevin Wilkinson, Taj Wyzgowski.. in various configs.

celta

Some tracks from me and the lads.. happy times. Me, Foss Paterson, Davey Paton, Neil Hay, John Henderson, Kevin Wilkinson, Taj Wyzgowski.. in various configs. 

09 Double Rise

10 Eleanor Plunkett

11 Celidh Funk

12 My Lily

testing my new 'd-series' hydrophone design (available from June 2012 from hydrophones.blogspot.com) against the DPA8011's. 

first section are the DPA's then the d-series !

The DPA's are no longer in production but did used to cost over £1000 each & if you want one now you'd be lucky to find them below £2000 each second hand. 

So, my d-series will be priced around £60 each & though I say it myself i'm very pleased with the way they stacked up in comparison with the DPA's. 

The DPA's have a stronger signal as they have a built in additional pre-amp, however the most interesting difference is the way the two hydrophone designs pick up some of the same sounds but at different levels. Indeed the DPA's seem not to pick up at all lots of the subtle sounds the d-series do. The DPA's seem to focus on the higher end sounds & the d-series cover a wider range of sounds more equally. I know i'm biased but I much prefer the sound of the d-series, which to my ears capture a more diverse, richer & more complex sound world.

Another interesting fact is that the DPA's had hardly any low frequency response. I tried applying various low pass filters on the Sound Devices recorder to them & none made any difference to the sound. This was a surprise indeed & i'm somewhat puzzled by that.

Both recordings were made directly into the SD7 series recorder, with gain levels equal & in the same location: 2 hydrophones of each model either side of a small wooden pier on an inlet on the east coast of sweden in May 2012.

Of course, the d-series are my design so as I said earlier I am biased, but lets just say that i'm very pleased by the way they perform next to the high-end DPA's.

£2000 + for a DPA8011 (if you can find one)
or
£60 for a JrF d-series 

hmmm....

09 Double Rise

Phil Cunningham

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