Audio Hardware and Software Q&A

1. Discuss your experiences with building your microphones. Was this process more or less what you thought it would be? How did your microphone rig work on your Drift walks? Were you able to capture both overall ambiance and extreme closeups? Describe your ideal microphone and recorder setup, with unlimited time and money.

I really enjoyed the experience of building my own microphones. It’s something that I never thought I would do and I thought that it would be really hard. It turned out to be not that hard though. It took time and some patience but luckily and didn’t have to redo anything or start over completely. I was surprised at how clear my recordings came out from my drift walks but I think that I was only able to get more ambiance than closeup sounds. On my next drift I want to experiment with the settings to try to get more closeup sounds. Ideally, if I had bunches of money, I would pay someone to do the sound recording for me with really nice equipment. However, if I was doing it myself with all the time and money in the world, I think I would still find in fun to use microphones that I had built.


2. How was your experience with operating the MiniDisc recorder? How does this recorder compare to other audio equipment you've used? In an ideal world, how would your recorder of choice function?

I found the MiniDisc pretty easy to operate overall, maybe just a little cumbersome though. It was a pain to have to set it to manual gain each time and it was difficult to figure out how to hold the mics and operate that all at once. Sometimes I missed some sounds because it took me too long to get the recorder out and set up even though I already had it on pause/record. I haven’t really used any other specific sound recording equipment before so I don’t have much to compare this experience before. This experience did make me appreciate the all-in-one features of modern technology where the mics are built in right the camera/recorder which just makes everything easier to hold. My recorder of choice would have the microphones in the recorder and would always be able to pick the right settings by itself.


3. Discuss the audio-editing software you chose and your history with this application. If you used this software for the first time, explain why you chose this particular application and how you think it helped you to accomplish your creative goals (or proved detrimental). Will you use this software again for future projects?

I used Audacity to edit my sounds for this project, which I had never used before this project. I choose Audacity because that is what was recommended and I found it pretty easy to use although somewhat limiting in the editing options. For the basics though it was defiantly sufficient and straightforward to use. I found the unlimited undo button very helpful and the enveloping tool for bringing down really high spots. The ability to zoom in really close to the sound wave helped a lot for editing out little parts where I accidentally hit the mics and to clean up the sounds in general. Now that I’m pretty used to Audacity it would probably be my first choice for editing sounds but I would like to explore the other options to see if there is anything that I like better.