{"id":882,"date":"2010-02-19T19:53:16","date_gmt":"2010-02-20T02:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/?p=882"},"modified":"2010-02-19T19:53:16","modified_gmt":"2010-02-20T02:53:16","slug":"of-cicadas-and-high-frequency-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/2010\/02\/19\/of-cicadas-and-high-frequency-sound\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Cicadas and High Frequency Sound"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"New

New Zealand Cicada from the Queen Charlotte Track, South Island.<\/p><\/div>\n

I’ve heard cicadas<\/a> on three continents, and they all sound different. I remember in Thailand they sounded like a constant-tone fire or burglar alarm, the high-pitched ones you hear in modern office buildings. In New Zealand, they have more of an overlapping start-stop pattern with more distinct “crrrkk”-ing, rather than a constant drone. they’d only seem to really get loud when in direct sunlight. It took me a day to finally be able to spot them consistently, get a photo (above), and then finally find some spots with minimal birdsong to record them (although I included one bellbird call in the sample below just for fun).<\/p>\n

This post also should serve as an example to other field recordists around how specifications do not a microphone make<\/em>. The Zoom H2<\/a>, while handy and theoretically able to capture sound up to 20kHz, really muddies high-frequency audio content. In person, these cicada sounds were rhythmic, pulsing, and you could even hear each individual start and stop their rhythms. In the final rendered audio – sure to be made worse by conversion to MP3 for Internet posting – feels flat, inarticulate, and less interesting than what my ears heard. One just can’t expect excellent frequency response from a $200 device. Still, once again, it’s what you have with you that counts<\/em>, so at least one comes away with something.<\/p>\n

It’s worth noting that Samon has the H4n’s frequency response graph<\/a> on their website, but not the H2’s. (If the same capsules used in each unit, it’s interesting how a peaks above 5-8 KHz still doesn’t always translate into improved fidelity<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Respected wireless manufacturer Lectrosonics<\/a> tests the frequency characteristics of their hardware with what they call “The Dreaded Key Test.” This consists simply of jingling a keyring with a lot of keys in front of a mic, specifically to test the reproduction of high-frequency transients<\/a>. I’d recommend that anyone evaluating a microphone do this test. If the recorded sounds are articulate and discrete, that’s a pretty darned good sign. Otherwise, this test will result in tones that are harsh, indistinct, and more like a blast of static. As many other folks will recommend: Rent gear you’re interested in before you buy it, if possible!<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object> New Zealand: Cicadas on the Queen Charlotte Track<\/a> by noisejockey<\/a><\/span>
\n[Zoom H2 recorder]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve heard cicadas on three continents, and they all sound different. I remember in Thailand they sounded like a constant-tone fire or burglar alarm, the high-pitched ones you hear in modern office buildings. In New Zealand, they have more of an overlapping start-stop pattern with more distinct “crrrkk”-ing, rather than a constant drone. they’d only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,63,7,134],"tags":[13,9,10,150,55,321,18,149],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1020,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions\/1020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}