Just before sunrise, a blackbird dominated the dawn chorus.  Recorded with a Superlux 524D into a Roland Duo Capture EX then into the iPhone.  The occasional machinery noise you can hear is an irrigation pump several km's in the distance.

Blackbird At Dawn Dec 8 19

Testing a small portable jecklin disk with a couple of Usi Pro's/mixpre 3.  The dawn chorus was very quiet but the neighbor's tractor, quantas jet and irrigation pumps.....not so much.  Not a very good recording but this is really only to check the stereo image using the disk.  I thought the stereo was excellent - better than I was expecting from a couple of omni's only a few inches apart.  I originally made a larger disc to place on a mic stand but wanted something more compact so I could fit the whole rig into one bag so I made this to fit into that bag I'm using.  While it's not round, I wonder if I could hear the difference if it was......

Jecklin Test 1

I was riding through Butcher's Gap conservation park which is just on the outskirts of Kingston SE, South Australia.  It was moderately windy and not many critters making noise when I heard these Paperbarks making some interesting creaking and squeaking sounds in the wind.  There's a cicada in the background at some point and the odd bird call.  Normally, I try to avoid wind at all costs - perhaps I shouldn't..... This was a pair of Lom Usi Pro's into a Mixpre 3.

Paperbarks

I was trying to record the magpies as they settle in for the night but they weren't cooperating with me.  But I did notice my old windmill was making some interesting squeaking sounds in the light breeze so I wondered up and put the Lom Usi's onto the base of it.

The Windmill

This is one of those accidental things.  I slowed my original file down to 40% speed to see what the high frequency noise was around 18-24khz.  Turns out, they're cicadas - but, the rest of the track sounded awesomely spooky at this speed!

Spooky Windmill

Dawn chorus with....er.....zombie birds?  While I often try to record dawn chorus's and ambient sounds as well as I can, this just isn't one of them ok?  Just for a bit of fun.  Headphones on and serious hats off.

Dawn Of Things

Just as the sky begins to lighten at dawn, the Magpies start up their dawn chorus.  This is around three quarters of an hour before sunrise so most birds are still quiet.  Pity about the neighbor's irrigation pump - just try to ignore that bit.  Lom Usi Pros into SD Mixpre 3 with the low cut filter on.

Maggies At Dawn Feb 2020

Just added a new float valve to a drinking trough for my sheep.   This is the sound of the last of the water draining out of the pipe, then the air under pressure before the water ('cos we just reopened the valve) -  gets to the trough.  Some air pockets in the water and finally the stream of water which slows to a trickle as the float valve kicks in.  sE 8's/mixpre 3

Fixing The Trough

I find the Zoom H2N to be a very handy little recorder.  It does a pretty good job of louder sources but suffers from being a little noisy in quiet ambiences.  So, how does it sound with a pair of Lom Usi's plugged in?  From 0 to 1.01 you're listening to the Lom Usi's into a MixPre 3 via the mini stereo jack.  1.01 to 1.31 is the Lom Usi's into the Zoom H2n and 1.31 onwards is the internal mics of the H2n.  To my ears, the MixPre3 is just a little cleaner to my ears....but not by a whole lot.  See what you think.

Zoom H2N with Lom Usi test

My Rooster.  Doing what a rooster does best!

Little Dude

The first 39 seconds is the Lewitt 440 pure into the Mixpre 3 at 45db of gain, after that, an sE8 at 50db gain.  I've added another 15db of gain in Izotope RX elements to get the overall levels up and I selected just the frequency of the crickets when matching the levels of the two mics.  The result is - it really shows how quiet the Lewitt is with 7db of self noise compared to the sE8 with 14db of noise - a respectable figure, but it sounds quite noisy when played back to back with the Lewitt.

Lewitt 440 pure vs sE8 condenser mics

I had left the Zoom H2N/Lom Usi's recording in my patch of trees for over an hour to record the Black Cockatoos that we'd seen go in there.  Not a peep.   So just for an experiment at the end, I left the recorder running and picked it up and walked further into the trees....and disturbed the Black Cockie's which did a couple laps of me voicing their disapproval.  Wasn't sure how much handling noise I'd get but it turned out very little.  These are one of my favorite birds.

Disturbing the Black Cockatoos

An unusually quiet evening so I left the Zoom H2N and Lom usi's under a small tree in a small patch of trees I have.  Wattlebirds quickly moved in flying around the mic and squawking and occasionally bashing into the shrubbery.  Some crows, magpies joined the party.  This was an hour and a half recording edited down to 12 minutes or so.  Recording started just before sunset.

Wattlebirds

Storm April 3 2020

The Maggie's had been chortling away for most of the morning so I wandered down to my trees and left the se8's and MixPre 3 out for some recording.  A bunch flew in and around where I had the mic's making for some nice flyby's and lots of calling.  The 'strange' sounds are my sheep sticking their heads through the fence.

Maggies April 10 2020

I had the Lewitt 440's out on my property on a very quiet afternoon - there were only a few distant crows and the hum of a wind turbine audible when the neighbor used explosives to topple some granite boulders on his property.   Scared the crap out of us at home - sounded like someone had thrown something very large and heavy onto our roof.

Explosion

Close up and personal with my breakfast cereal!  Sounds like it's on fire!

quedecree

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