REFLECTIONS
• What problems did you encounter? What did you try to do to get past or mitigate these?
I think the greatest problem was that we couldn’t quickly understand the new concepts that has been introduced. For example, the signal to noise ratio is one. Although I have read the reading, I still cannot grasp the exact concept and the principle behind it. I guess I need to do some research on this to know where the concept comes from and how does it work. Other problems was to keep the range in between -12db to -6 db; but it was easy to work out by using the microphone gain dial on the side.
• What were your most successful recordings?
The most successful part is the one we done around the alumni courtyard. The background sound of the flowing water was great.
• What did you discover about microphone technique?
Before this exercise, I didn’t know there’s many different operation mode for recording, and that control over recording level is also vital. Using the microphone gain dial really helps to control the the signal to noise ratio.
• Did you have difficulty setting levels?
Of course, but we worked it out quite quickly with the instructions given.
• Did you have difficulty getting ‘clean’ sound – ie good ‘signal to noise ratio’?
It’s just that I don’t understand the numbers, like why do we use -6db or -12db rather than a number like 1 or 20. I wanted to know how calculations has worked to produce the numbers. Also, since we want a high signal to noise ratio, isn’t a 2db recording has more signal that the range we use to record? Despite the questions, following the instructions to get a clean sound wasn’t too hard, but I still feel there’s too much noise.
