Topic: project help

[Groundhog]

 hey folks

I'm doing a project for my human factors psychology class on audience taping. I'm going to try to analyze the problems faced by tapers in creating the best possible recordings from a human factors perspective. Some issues I want to look at are what frequencies people actually hear/want to hear (what sounds most like being at the show?), how tapers minimize the effects of crowd noise, stereo vs analogue recording, etc. If anyone has any suggestions for resources, such as journal articles, I'd love to hear them. Thanks in advance.

-Chris

[Groundhog]

bump... anyone?

[Brian Skalinder]

The reason I've not replied is I'm not really clear what you're looking for.

Some issues I want to look at are what frequencies people actually hear/want to hear (what sounds most like being at the show?)

From a purely theoretical standpoint, it makes sense to try to capture all the frequencies audible to humans, so roughly 20 Hz to 20 kHz.  As for what people want to hear, and what sounds most like being at a show:  this is HUGELY subjective (hence all the different flavors of recording gear used by different people) and based in no small part on playback system and listening preferences.  The only common theme:  everyone wants it to sound good to their ears, on their playback system, in their listening environment; all of which means different things to different people.

how tapers minimize the effects of crowd noise

This is really the only question I can address directly.  I personally use the following tactics to minimize the effects of crowd noise:

• Location, location, location!  Closer to the sound source = less crowd noise.  But there's a balance - too close, e.g. a stack tape, and the recording loses imaging.
• Polar patterns - with a loud crowd, and if location doesn't do enough to minimize crowd noise, using a tighter polar pattern can have a big impact.  From most open to tightest pattern:  omni, subcardioid, cardioid, supercardioid / hypercardioid, shotgun.  The tighter the pattern, the less crowd noise.  Though the tighter the pattern, the less natural sounding the recording.

stereo vs analogue recording

Stereo and analog recording are not mutually exclusive.  Perhaps you mean digital v. analog?  Just about every taper I know records to the digital domain. 

If anyone has any suggestions for resources, such as journal articles, I'd love to hear them.

I don't think you'll find many resources like journal articles.  There are a few brief news stories about taping, kind of human interest type stories.  But I can't tell you where to find them, it's been too long.

It's tough to provide much more given I'm not clear on what, exactly, you seek (in no small part because I'm not familiar with the definition of a "human factors perspective").

[Chuck]

I've seen several people over the years doing research on various aspects of taping. If you have specific questions or need interviews, I'm sure there are people here that would participate. The questions you asked in your first post were very general and in one case didn't make any sense.