Hello all - this is my first post and I am not a technically minded person so please bear with me! I recently purchased a used iRiver H120 and immediately replaced the battery (an operation which went smoothly, thank goodness) and installed the Rockbox firmware which enables you to alter gain as you are recording, unlike the iRiver firmware.
I want to use the H120 to record bird calls so was imagining that I could simply use my old camcorder directional rifle mic (a very cheap one) which I have used relatively successfully with a Sony MD recorder. However the mic does not do as well in the iRiver - I think I need something with a higher gain/more sensitivity to quieter sounds, as the results I got were very quiet. Pushing up the gain to max on Rockbox gives very hissy results.
I am a total novice at microphones but through reading it seems I need either a better mic with higher gain or a pre-amp setup.
The trouble with the pre-amp idea is that I cannot find a reasonably cheap one which runs off batteries, and also using one will start to make the setup a bit cumbersome for field recording.
So can anyone recommend a decent mic (directional)?
Or can anyone tell me the technical specs I need to be looking for when I am considering a mic?
And finally a silly technical question: is the battery in a powered mic used for pre-amping the signal, or for something else?? (You can see I don't know much, can't you?). If so, do I just need to buy a mic which takes a lot of batteries???
Thanks for your patience!
Sean