Topic: Tascam DR-05, ROLAND CS-10EM - How can get I them to tolerate louder sounds?

[omgblood]

This is my first time recording audio and I ended up with a DR-05 and CS-10EM to record binaural sounds with my videos walking around in the city. I went into the city last weekend to record for the first time and the sound would be distorted and garbled when something loud passed by, sometimes a bus but being under a bridge that had a train moving on top of it really messed up the sound.

Options I can see on the recorder is the: input level, the low cut filter, level align, peak reduction, auto level, limiter.

There's an event on Saturday (in 2 days) I hope to film and record audio and I'm 95% sure will have lots of loud sounds so I don't have much time to figure it out so I thought I'd ask

[dogmusic]

This is my first time recording audio and I ended up with a DR-05 and CS-10EM to record binaural sounds with my videos walking around in the city. I went into the city last weekend to record for the first time and the sound would be distorted and garbled when something loud passed by, sometimes a bus but being under a bridge that had a train moving on top of it really messed up the sound.

Options I can see on the recorder is the: input level, the low cut filter, level align, peak reduction, auto level, limiter.

There's an event on Saturday (in 2 days) I hope to film and record audio and I'm 95% sure will have lots of loud sounds so I don't have much time to figure it out so I thought I'd ask

Is plug-in power turned on?

[omgblood]

This is my first time recording audio and I ended up with a DR-05 and CS-10EM to record binaural sounds with my videos walking around in the city. I went into the city last weekend to record for the first time and the sound would be distorted and garbled when something loud passed by, sometimes a bus but being under a bridge that had a train moving on top of it really messed up the sound.

Options I can see on the recorder is the: input level, the low cut filter, level align, peak reduction, auto level, limiter.

There's an event on Saturday (in 2 days) I hope to film and record audio and I'm 95% sure will have lots of loud sounds so I don't have much time to figure it out so I thought I'd ask

Is plug-in power turned on?

Yes

[mjwin]

It's hard to know what to suggest here. You say that  PIP is switched on. The DR05 has a wide input range encompassing both  mic and line levels, so it shouldn't overload easily. Have you set the DR05 to its minimum gain setting, (not auto gain) ? With rec light flashing,  hold << button until you get to minimum (Sorry, I can't remember the way it's displayed!). Does the problem still occur?

I just looked at the specs of the CS10 & did a back-of-envelope calculation. Sparing you the details,  as the CS10 is  a low output mic, when it's coupled with the lowest sensitivity of the DR05 it should allow for a sound level of about 130dB before clipping!  So the chances are that the mic itself will overload before it overloads the input of the Tascam.  Or, more likely,  it will run out of power from the PIP output - This might well be what's happening as it's a common occurrence at loud shows, hence the use of battery boxes.

But, I'm thinking that your street ambiance isn't likely to be that loud unless you have an emergency vehicle pass by, or they're excavating the road with jack hammers, etc. 

A strong possibility is wind / air movement. The CS10s have no protection against wind whatsoever. Outside, even on a still day, a large vehicle passing close by creates sufficient air movement to overload an omni mic such as this. The result will be clipping & heavy distortion.   The overload in this case could be in the mic or the recorder, it's hard to tell. You could try the Tascam's low pass filter, but I'm almost sure that it is implemented digitally (it has several stages iirc) so won't protect the input itself from overload.

Have you run some tests just around your house or backyard?  Try blowing gently on the mics - do they clip / distort? 

If they do, does a bandana suit you?  Lol! But it's a serious suggestion. Any kind of fabric over the mic would help with this. or those fur earmuffs that folks wear, but you'd look pretty crazy in these during the summer...

It's worth experimenting just to try to get to the root of the problem.  Good luck!

[seethreepo]

Rather than a bandana try and get some foam windscreens to help with noise.  Check eBay first , most times you can get cheap screens . Or since it’s time sensitive your local music store.

[Ozpeter]

The Roland comes with windscreens - at least mine did.  They seem to be reasonably effective.  (Define 'reasonably').

I used mine with the Zoom F1 to provide sound for a video I made at a local art gallery.  The gallery has rock bands playing on Friday nights (would you believe).  I took the lazy way out and set the Zoom to auto level, and also used the limiter.  All was good till I walked into the gallery where the band were playing, and the result was horrible.  I think it was probably the limiter kind of pumping.  Really I should have set a proper level with the loudest sound - the band - and accepted that people talking in the rest of the gallery was going to sound pretty quiet - because by comparison, it is pretty quiet.  Then I could have bumped up the level when editing the video.

I think this is an inherent problem with recording ambient sound.  Your ears adjust to trains and traffic vs birdsong in the next street when you're there, but it doesn't seem to work quite the same way when playing back a wide dynamic range recording back home.  You don't realise how quiet birdsong actually is in comparison to a train.  All of which goes to show that many people really don't want to accurately reproduce the dynamic range available from audio systems these days.  They turn down the loud bits and turn up the quiet bits, if only to counter the background noise in the home.  A pity.