It's really amazing what you guys can conjure up from the depths of the microphone builder drawer. I'm impressed and delighted! ?
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What I’m missing is that @cx b (clistburnham) didn’t mention what kind of sounds he would like to record on an extremely short pickup range? How short is extremely short? But maybe that’s not relevant.
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This is my short story about recording sounds from close range in a noob way.
A few years ago a friend of mine asked me if I could record and provide all sorts of bicycle sound effects and nature sounds for his bicycle game that was in development at the time. Since I had no experience in this field, I focused intensively on Foley recording and sound design, and how to achieve good results. I read many interesting articles and watched a lot of insightful videos from some of the best Foley artists in the world. It was fantastic to get a little glimpse behind the scenes.
As you may have guessed. What I was missing was a well-equipped Foley studio, professional studio equipment and many years of experience in this field. :-) Anyway, I wanted to help my friend and started experimenting with the equipment I had: A Sony PCM M10, an audio interface and a few microphones that I collected over the years.
One of the videos that helped me a lot was created by David Farmer, the Sound Designer of Lord of the Rings Sound Effects (LOTR). In case anyone is interested, he documented some of the .
The first two minutes of his instruction video “” and his recording tips starting at 09:25 pointed me in the right direction. Many thanks, David!
I tried to record the bicycle sound effects with the PCM M10 alone, but it turned out that the background ambiance was still too dominant to remove it from the recording in post-production without creating unpleasant artifacts. So I tested every single microphone I had with the PCM M10 at close range and ended up recording many of the bike sound effects with a vintage microphone originally designed for recording on reel-to-reel-tape recorders. A Pioneer CM-2S unidirectional stereo condenser. I used only one channel of the CM-2S, pointed at the sound source of interest at close range. To my ears this combination produced the best result with almost no background noise when recording bicycle sound effects. Here are the specifications of the CM-S2:
Dual element electret condenser unit
Hypercardioid pattern
Response: 20-20,000 Hz
Output impedance: 1000 ohms
Sensitivity: -68 dB at 1 kHz (0 dB = 1 V/? bar)
Maximum SPL: 126 dB
S/N: 46 dB;?
1.5-V "AAA" cell power supply
6.06" H x 4.33" W
Weight: 11.2 ounces
21 -ft cable
Pair comes mounted on desk stand.
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I was able to integrate many of the mono recordings into the three-dimensional sound space of the bike game and it sounded beautiful as we rode through the game. Unfortunately, the game is on hold because priorities have shifted somewhat. That's it!
