| I've recorded birds and crickets and a creek. For these sounds, you need tons of gain, more than I had in the Manley Dual Mono pre I was using. Still, to 24 bit, it's alright to peak at -20 or -30. I recorded through a HEDD to a Masterlink- straight into a DA78 on a different occasion.
Avoiding air thumps to the mics is a big issue. This is a real deal-killer. I've used DPA 4011's with the foam things to avoid wind-pops, which works pretty well but is not failsafe by any means, and Manley Golds, which are very, very vulnerable to air movement and could only be done when it was really still, but the big signal and low self noise of the large diaphragm was very welcome when it worked. I could really use some small diaphragm omnis for this, and pres with a lot more quiet gain. The small omnis are the least vulnerable of all mics to air movement troubles, by a goodly margin.
Back in the 4 track days, I hung a SM57 out my city window, and you know it got the idea across quite well.
For a great example of street scenes interspersed with music, check out Kronos Quartet's new one, "Nuevo". It's rather cinematic in feel, and done really, really well. |