How to make good audio recordings in the field?

held January 2006 at the LSA meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico Sven Grawunder Max Planck Institute for evolutionary Anthropology, Dep. of Linguistics, Leipzig, Germany

How to decide on what I need? What is good?

Everybody will tell you: “It depends on…  What do you want to do? What for?

   What is the field (recording) situation like?

What can You handle?

How big is your budget?

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Quality Technology Costs Feasibility Purpose Field situation S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 3

Feasibility (Power supply, Know How) Costs (technique, transport) Technology (Microphone, Recorder) Recording Quality (frequency range, S/N ratio, quantization ) Field situation (recording environment, speaker) Purpose (documentation, specific elicitation) S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 4

 Goals (purpose)  Recorders  Microphones (incl. wind shield)  Setups  Field situation (recording environment) S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 5

  Transcription Annotation

Analysis

     Pitch Intensity Formant estimation VOT Voice Quality Human hearing (20-18000Hz) Common practice in acoustic phonetic analysis (40-12000Hz) S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 6

Why field recordings?

 language documentation (variety of linguistic genres, incl. musical genres)   conversational analyses oral history  specific elecitation of paradigms for a decent number of speakers (morphosyntax, phonology, phonetics)  Wordlists   Narrative interview Short stories S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 7

Example 1

0.8599

0 -0.7548

5000 Time (s) 0 34.0026

Time (s) S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 48.0155

48.0155

9

Field situation

 Ambient noises (people, animals, natural sources, vehicles, machines etc.)  Climate (temperature range, humidity)  Long Distances (Transport)  Energy supply  Interacting in foreign languages (working language, contact language, elicited language) S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 10

Equipment

Recorders

 Analog/Digital (costs, formats, media)  Digital Formats (16bit PCM, 22.05kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz)  Quality (signal-to-noise ratio)  Power Supply (accumulator / battery)  Metering (details, delay, channel split)  Media (costs, durability, long-lasting) S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 12

Barely acceptable to acceptable

Barely acceptable (but not recommendable) Acceptable (but not recommendable)  Micro cassettes via Dictaphone  IPod  PC/Mac Laptop internal soundcard  dv-camera tone (ext. mic) S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 13

Good to Very Good

 Good (but not recommendable)  Tape recorders (analogue, DCC) Very good  DAT-Recorder  Solid State Recorder  (Hi-)MD recorders S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 14

DAT-Recorders

Sony TCD-D100 Fostex PD 4 MK II S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig TASCAM DA-P1 15

solid state recorders

But: •Power supply via Accu •Price S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 16

A good solution for the field?

 e.g. Marantz PMD 660  Battery powered    Individual Channel metering Mono recording possible 44.1 & 48 kHz / 16bit   Speakers + Line Out Professional XLR Input S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 17

Not bad, but …

 It needs E-net connection for direct USB-copying to PC/MAC  card reader  Bad circuit insulation: phantom power current influences the recording  Never run out of batteries  shielded cables, self powered mics  Actual presets are invisible S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 18

smaller siblings

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Saving Raw Data

To your computer Via Card-Reader or Directly via USB-cable (Electricity needed!!!) Another solution: Direct Copying to a “mobile photo hard drive” S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 20

MD and Hi-MD

 ATRAC  opaque format  ATRAC  WAV : Don’t betray yourself  MD-WAV  MD-PC: Beware losing your data  Still Open Software “needed” S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 21

Microphones

 Frequency range  Frequency response  directionality  powering S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 22

Microphone types

 built-in mics only in case of emergency!!!

 bad quality  machine noise  omni directional  Dynamic mics  mic-mouth distance crucial  Self-powered electrets (condenser) mics  Rather than phantom powered condenser mics S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 23

Frequency range

Frequency response

Directionality •Omnidirectional (cartoid charcteristic) •Directional (hyperbolic characteristic) S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 24

Microphone stands

 On a tripod or stand?

 On the table?

 In your hand?

 On the speaker?  Head mounted mic?

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21 / 02 / 06

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Mono or Stereo???

Mono  Elicitation (One-to one)  1 Speaker (+ close standing interviewer) Stereo  More than 1 Speaker  Moving Speakers  Music S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 27

Mono Stereo AKG C100 S Shure Beta 53 B S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig Sony ECM-MS957 28

windshields

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Don’t ignore…

 Phantom power (48 Hz)  Electric circuit (55-60 Hz)  Cable (kinks and adapters)  Cable shielding (microphone cable, NOT monitor cable)  Connections (jacks, plugs etc.) S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 30

Field conditions

The 7 enemies of your equipment

  Dust Heat   Humidity / Water Cold  Hard shaking/sudden motion/vibration  Thieves 

Yourself

   Insolate your devices!

Watch the cables!

Keep the equipment dry!

   Protect your devices!!!

Watch or let watch!

Take save backups with you!!!

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Some Rules 1 (Time)

 Have a time buffer  Expect that the recording (setup) takes twice as long as in the lab   Practice the record setup (microphone settings, cable ports/jacks, recorder settings) Check “Recording Onset Time” (especially for Tape-Recorders of all types: MC, DAT, DCC) S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 33

Some Rules 2 (Equipment)

 Get to know your equipment

before

to the field  you go You don’t want to play with settings in a real situation  Consider that the field session may be a ‘stressful’ situation  You need to focus on your subject (plus Monitoring, Metering, Prompting paradigms, Making notes, …) S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 34

Some Rules 3 (Supply)

 Make sure that you

never

run out of Power (Batteries)!

 Accumulators  Solar panel for recharging?

 Make sure that you

never

run out of storage (Cassetes, Cards, etc.)!

 Consider a ratio of 5:1 S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 35

Some Rules 4 (Field Situation)

 Get aware of the recording environment  The more “natural” the more “distorted” – Lower sometimes your expectations  Nonetheless try to control the recording environment S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 36

Recording environment

 Choose a possibly quiet location  Close doors and windows  Cover large reverberant surfaces  Ask for turning off lights, refrigerators, fans, air conditioning etc.  Remove anything that ticks, buzzes, bangs, rattles, squeaks, hisses, or otherwise makes itself heard S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 37

Speaker

 Find the appropriate Microphone – Mouth distance (Headworn M. / Static M.)  Watch hands and feet  Ask for reiterations S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 38

Some Rules 5 (After Recording)

 Control your data again – listen through your recordings  Make notes (on settings, solutions, etc.)  Don’t lower the quality requirements for digitization S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 39

References:

 EMELD: http://emeld.org/school/toolroom/  DOBES: http://www.mpi.nl/DOBES  Oral history: http://www.historicalvoices.org/oralhistory/  http://bartus.org/akustyk/signal_aquisition.p

df  Radio feature literature S. Grawunder MPI EVA Leipzig 40

Good luck with your recordings!!!

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