Direct mp3 download or play: Springtime Ambience 2010
Here is a new recording I made using microphones installed on the outside of my house. You can go here to see pictures of the microphones I’m using, and by the way, these still the original mikes. They have endured cold, moisture, squirrels, and birds pecking at them and they still work quite well.
Shown here are Countryman Type 85 direct boxes, an electret condenser microphone phantom power inserter box (middle and behind direct boxes), and a Mackie 1202VLZ mixer. The two brown cables are the balanced audio coming from the direct boxes connected to channels 1 and 2 on the mixer. The mixer provides 48 volts of regular phantom power to the direct boxes.
Below the direct boxes, electret phantom power inserter and mixer is a DBX 166A compressor and a Behringer Feedback Destroyer Pro DSP1100P. I explain how all of this works here. This is how I can make really inexpensive microphones sound reasonably good. Imagine putting Neumann U87’s out in the rain, just to get an ambient recording. As far as I know they are the finest microphones made (over $2,000 each) and they would be ruined. With my arrangement, I get good results (I understand that is a matter of opinion and there is really no comparison between good studio microphones and the mikes I am using) and if a microphone fails I can just get another one for less than three dollars from Radio Shack.
This is another post that was deleted by mistake. Sorry, I lost the comments.
