Topic: Identify this sound...

[greenone]

Hey all - I had this odd sound in my left channel over the weekend that seemed to come and go throughout the show. I could only really hear it during the quiet parts; it's sort of a fluttery tapping noise. Just wondering if anyone's heard something similar before and if it sounds like cause for concern (other than the fact that it's an annoying unidentified sound). Attached is a 5-second mp3; 101kb in size.

The mics in question were my Elation KM201's; I've owned them for three years now. They're modular mics, I was running card caps (the only ones I own), XY at about 9 feet at the Oakdale in Wallingford, CT. My mic stand was inside the back of the FOH area, which has an aisle right behind it. The ceiling is probably 40 or 50 feet high inside. Basically, they were inside a nice, sizeable indoor theater with no chance of interference from mischievous concergoers or any ventilation systems in the immediate vicinity. It basically sounds like someone tapping very lightly and quickly on the outside of my left windscreen - and only the left one.

For background, I taped a show back at the end of May where there was a 15-minute cloudburst in the middle of it. I shielded my mics from above for the whole time and no raindrops fell right into the mic, but I was concerned about condensation so I brought the mics home afterwards, unscrewed the capsules, and basically let them air out for a few weeks. The recording from May did have what almost sounded like handling noise though I obviously wasn't touching the mics at the time. The mics have been back in my bag ever since then, and that's pretty typical usage - I'll do three or four shows in a week and then nothing for a month.

So...any ideas?

[JasonR]

It's more prominent on the left, but I hear it in both channels.  Likewise, it shows up on both channels as low frequency peaks with more amplitude on the left.  Any chance there was a vibration from the floor that your mics picked up, and perhaps one is more sensitive to this than the other?  It sounds more like something that actually happened than a malfunction to me.

- Jason

[greenone]

Hey Jason - thanks for checking it out. This was for Guster on Friday; did you or Matt end up going to Brooklyn?

It did happen at varying speeds throughout the show; that's the fastest I heard it. There wasn't anyone standing within I'd say a six-foot radius, and that was the FOH and lighting engineers. The stand itself was on solid ground - basically the carpeted floor of the theater, which I assume is a concrete slab.The FOH area had a small board to the left for the openers, then a lighting board, and the big desk to the right for the main act. I was behind all of that by a good six feet, and up a foot or two (it's a step down into the FOH area). The mics are shockmounted with AT8410s, and the stand has rubber feet (cups around the metal stand legs, not the plastic stuff you see on the Bogen-type stands).

My next shows aren't for a couple of weeks but I'll see if I can reproduce it here in the meantime...

[greenone]

Here's another one from the very beginning of the openers' recording. This one's almost a buzz; it seems to slow down as the show goes on to the light tapping you heard in the first sample.

[Oysterhead00]

No idea what that sound is, hopefully it's an easy fix and I'm sure someone here will recognize it from experience.  Guess the show wasn't meant to be taped...I pretty much destroyed my CJB3 trying to take it apart, looks like I could have fixed the Line/Optical in with a little soldering, but ripping it apart without a tiny screw driver I think I messed some more stuff up.  Good news is that I have one coming from a fellow TSer in time for this weekend

I broke down my gear and found out some friends of a friend from New Haven came and bought tix at the door so I brought my gear out to my car, came back in using my spare ticket (security lady wasn't happy about that one), gave a couple my close tix and sat up in the balcony for Guster.  Great show.  Here's to hoping I have a much more productive night at SPAC next month!