field recording Archives - FinalRune Academy

Behind the Scenes of Of Fae & Fiends

Published in February of 2020, Of Fae & Fiends is my most personal work to-date, which is a bit odd to say given the fact that it’s a faerie tale.

The story evolved from various walks my daughter Nyana (7 at the time) and I would go on in the woods, and the prompt “Dada, tell me a story,” which at some point became hooked on a large, moss covered boulder behind our home, and the possibility that underneath it was a tunnel to a fantastic world beyond. It all kind of spiraled out from there.

When we got to the production process, we (longstanding collaborator Bill Dufris and I) decided to do it in our emerging “Studio-Location Hybrid Style” which we pioneered in The Dark Tome, Season 2.

All of the scenes in the realm of Fae were recorded in our world-class audio drama studio located at William Dufris’s Mind’s Eye Productions facilities in South Portland. This allows us to record everything clean and to polish it in post-production and have fun with weird creature voices and other effects.

All of the scenes in the “real” world were recorded at my friend Jeremy Kasten’s farmhouse in Berwick, Maine, which was as perfect a set as you could imagine for this show. We stopped short of trying to train one of Jeremy’s goats to work in the show, but otherwise our location was pretty much identical to what the script called for.

Some people may think it’s a tremendous amount of work to do it like this, especially when we have a perfectly good studio to work with, but there is nothing quite like the sound of — for example — speeding down a country road, twisting onto dirt, slamming a car into park and bursting out yelling into a great big field.

An audio drama is only as good as the sum of its component parts.

That starts with the script itself, which — while I’m biased — I think is very strong. I tried to harken back to works I love (Neil Gaiman’s memory that childhood is a terrifying place, and the sharpness with which 1800s faerie tales are told) while also subverting and adding to the fantasy genre. This is not a ‘black and white’ world, Faerie is multi-colored and vibrant, weird in the best way possible and the script remembers that monsters are always the hero in their version of the story.

And this cast – WOW! – we had an extraordinarily strong response to our first casting call and put together an incredible mix of talent, inclusive of returning close collaborators, as well as a number of performers we’d never worked with before.

One of the last projects I ever worked on with William Dufris. And it was a good one!

I could keep on going… The production itself has a strange magical energy to it in that the news was just breaking that Bill Dufris’s cancer had returned, and Bill had to limit his involvement due to physical restraints (like, his body couldn’t do it, not that we had to put Bill in a straight-jacket or anything). Bill makes a few brilliant cameo performances in the show, and when he’s in it, he’s IN – larger than life, the Bill Dufris that everyone know and loves, that steals fire from the gods, that has a consistent record of doing things that people tell him are impossible.

The final stage to this – MUSIC and SOUND EFFECTS. As of this writing, we’re still deep in this process, but we had the pleasure of working with Rory O’Shea, who did sound design for LOCKE & KEY and last year’s HOMEFRONT, and Peter Van Riet, the Belgian-based composer who has created music for our projects LOCKE & KEY, A JOURNEY WITH STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, and THE DARK TOME. Finally! We committed to underscoring the entire show, and brought on Frank Schulmeyer (a friend of Bill’s from the London days).

All of this is a way of saying… Don’t miss this show!

Behind the Scenes of The Dark Tome

James Herrera and Lisa Stathoplos as the agents of evil

We pioneered our ‘studio-field recording hybrid’ approach here, utilizing on-location shoots for the scenes that take place within Simpson Falls, Maine, and the studio set-up (learned from The X-Files) for scenes that take place within the interior of the book, The Dark Tome.

For Season 1, we had a fantastic opportunity to produce a story by Joe Hill and came up with the conceit of Cassie, Gussy, and the magic book, but only had a vague idea of how the overarching storyline would develop. By the end of Season 1, where we reveal how Gussy got the book and start painting out details of his personal life, we knew a lot more about the fictional town of Simpson Falls, Maine, and spent the next year fleshing out the larger mythos of the Dark Tome.

For Season 2, we arranged all stories in advance and wrote the script as a single through-line story, and recorded it as a cohesive event; meaning, the stories are much more interconnected than they were in Season 1, and Cassie’s story arc becomes much more important as she starts to really come into her own as a character.

Whereas in Season 1 Cassie was a youth who was playing around with magic and without much control over her situation, in Season 2 she finds herself without her guide, Gussy, and forced to face an insanely hostile world. Only through true friendship and by finding her inner strength, does Cassie have any hope of staying alive and saving the multiverse.

Since Cassie’s throughline takes place in the ‘real world’ (whatever that is), we decided to go back to our roots, recording this section of the storyline on location, as we did for Locke and Key.

So yup, back to shoving actors into the backs of cars, running around outside, up into bedrooms, etc. as we create a visceral, immersive sound environment constructed similarly to how a film is made.

For the interior of the Dark Tome stories, we stayed with an in-studio approach, allowing us to make the adapted stories feel ‘super-real’ with a constructed reality that is less gritty than the real world. The extra fun part about the Dark Tome is that we get to have a guest cast on every interior story, so the breadth and diversity of acting talent is really impressive, as we leap from dystopian Toronto to a cul-de-sac suburb in anywhere America to a post-apocalyptic Caribbean island and to stranger places, indeed.

We hope you’ll enjoy going on the ride as we much as we enjoyed building it!

– Fred Greenhalgh and Bill Dufris, Dagaz Media

field recordist fred greenhalgh on location in a car — Fred stuffed in the backseat with Lilly Thorne and Casey Turner - field recording at its finest!

recording the dark tome — Recording THE BACCHAE by Liz Hand

Recording the VISHAKANYA's CHOICE by Roshani Chokshi

Lilly Thorne as Cassie Pinkham — Actress Lilly Thorne plays the lead, CASSIE

From left, Fred Greenhalgh, Tim Sample, Lilly Thorne, Bill Duffy (center)

Recording audio drama based on Tananarive Due's story, TRIAL DAY — Recording Tananarive Due's story, TRIAL DAY

Fred also did an in-depth breakdown comparing different mic choices against each other (mono mic, X-Y stereo, binaural stereo) at Podtales 2019.

Recap of Fred’s Podtales 2019 mic workshop

Descending the River with the RØDE SmartLav Microphone

Essential gear for any whitewater rafting expedition – a waterproofed carry case, SmartLav mic in celophane, and emergency flotation – err… beer

Warning: Do not try this at home. Well, I suppose you can’t – insofar as the story we’re about to tell involves Class IV Whitewater rapids on the Kennebec River in Maine.

So the mission at hand: there is a sequence in Season 2 of The Cleansed where our characters must descend a treacherous whitewater river in inadequate water craft. We wanted this scene to sound as big, loud, and scary as running an actual river is. As even the most experienced rafting guides will tell you – the river is in control. Give it respect. And when things go sour, well, go along for the ride.

This story ultimately involves us doing our best to waterproof some gear and then send it down a river, but let’s start with the setup of how we recorded this scene.

Let’s start with the script. Here’s how it reads:

Cleansed s2e2 River Sequence from Fred Greenhalgh

Dialogue

One actor holds the canoe, and two others sit in it… The recordist is just off to the side.

We’ve remarked on the audio drama field recording process before; this sequence is what field recording was made for. You can send people to outer space, have heady, emotional drama, and EQ pretty much anyone anywhere while in the studio BUT having them be in canoes just doesn’t sound the same unless they’re in canoes.

So yeah, we put our actors in canoes.

For Season 2 we had upgraded to a Sound Devices 702 recorder, which is a fantastic rig (except for the fact that it runs on Lion batteries and we were short this day, so we had to jerry-rig a charger for our recordist that ran off a car battery and sat in a box in the canoe, but I digress). Our primary location mic is a RØDE NT-4, which gives us gorgeous stereo capture, while the RØDE fishpole and BLIMP set-up stood up to a steady 5mph wind.

The sequence has three canoes, two characters in each, so we did the same while recording. We grabbed two actors, got them in the canoes, and pulled them offshore a little bit – in a nice, non-moving, shallow spot, incidentally. We positioned the recordist at the head, so one actor was a little further from the mic, physically, though both actors were recorded on mic-center.

With tape (well, CF card) rolling, we started the sequence. The actors were physically paddling throughout the sequence, their scripts laid out before them. I held the canoe taut so they could not physically progress, but their breathing, level of urgency, and paddle strokes all felt naturally timed to the dialogue. As things start to get hairy in the script, I messed with them a little – pushing the canoe up or pulling it down suddenly as the characters struct rapids in the story. So all the little shrieks – while called for in the script – got a little bit of extra terror thanks to a particularly mischievous director.

And oh yeah, we definitely dunked our lead actors from the canoes so we could get that sound, too. Here’s me (waist-deep) with my RØDE NTG-2 shotgun mic, the recordist in the foreground is getting the stereo track:

Fred Greenhalgh and Recordist Randall Farr record actors getting thrown into the water. Photo courtesy David Turner

Sound Design

When all of this was put together, we had pretty solid bones to work with. However, one of the fundamental tenets of sound design is that we expect sound to sound larger than life, so there was still quite a lot of work cranking this thing up to 11.

Intrepid sound designers Matthew J Boudreau and Monique Boudreau of Aural Stage Studios got to work layering sounds they recorded at Niagara Falls to give the appropriate amount of ‘whoosh’ – while also amping up the canoe/rapids moments. There are nice little crunches against the canoe, roars and splooshes. One of my favorites is when the characters go under water – the ‘live’ sound is there, but it is amped up with sound design to be even bigger than the real thing.

Another thing the Boudreaus did magnificently here was to convey the sense of going under water – again, just after the characters are tossed from the boat, there is a moment where purely through sound design alone you’re imagining being under water and fighting your way above. Just a little bit of bubbly sound conjures the scene in your imagination. And as someone who has been out of control flying down a whitewater river… it was appropriately terrifying.

The Rafting Trip

Lavalier mic recording whitewater rapidsa

My wife was a good sport about duct-taping a rather unsightly lav mic to her shoulder

So if this was all so good, why the hell did you go whitewater rafting and capture a whole bunch more sound? Well, mostly because I could.

My employer, ReVision Energy, was already planning a company rafting trip and the challenge of trying to capture the sounds of the roaring river (while simultaneously not ending up in the water myself) was too tempting to resist.

In the end I think I over-analyzed it a bit, but here is what my recording set-up was, with some tips from various indies on the AIR list:

- RØDE SmartLav, wrapped in a cellophane baggie and duct-taped shut. The Lav was clipped to my wife’s PFD (oh, and did I mention we have an infant? I held onto the baby and sat out the scary river parts, while my wife rode the Class IV Gorge. On the safer lower half of the river we all got in. Yeah, the compromises parents make).
- Sansa Clip used as a recorder – wha?!OK, so here’s some important fine print on the RØDE SmartLav. The unit is advertised to be a Smartphone recorder, and it’s worked really well for me doing little VO dubs on my Android phone. Nowhere in product marketing does it say it is intended to be strapped to you and sent down a river.I say this because I first tried to get the SmartLav to work on my Sony PCM-10 – my favorite pocket field recorder – and I couldn’t get any levels whatsoever. It turns out the SmartLav uses a TRRS type connector, which looks like an ordinary 1/8″ mic except that it gets some power output from the unit it’s plugged into. This meant the mic-only input of the PCM-M10 left it dead, but something like this crummy MP3 player gave it the signal it needed to turn on.This set-up seemed to work OK though as you can imagine the recording options of the Sansa were pretty plain (like, no control over levels or ability to monitor your mix) – but I had to accept that this was an experiment and what we would get was what we would get.

On later, milder stretches of river, I just strapped the SmartLav contraption to the side of the raft. As our guide said, “Use #4,671 for duct tape!”

The recorder setup was put into a sandwich bag, duct-taped shut, then put into a water-resistant recording bag which also was duct-taped shut, then carabiner-clipped to my wife’s PFD.

The Results

Well, my wife got down the river without flying off the raft, and the recorder did not get soaked, and my recordings survived the journey. Check and check!

The SmartLav recordings, however, left a little something to be desired. I think this mostly had to do with the quality of the MP3 player – it just was not up to pro standards and for most of the harrowing – errr, more ‘sound rich’ – parts, it just peaked into oblivion. It did much better for quieter moments, such as picking up this really fun moment with our straight up Mainah’ guide, GW:

finalrune · Kennebec River Rafting Raw Recording

In my obsession to get a recorder through the gorge of the Kennebec River, I forgot a lesson I had learned during Season 1 of The Cleansed: that sometimes real can be too real.

What I mean, is – on Episode 3 there is a scene where the Refuge is torched by ne’er do wells. In attempts to get the right sound of flames, I went to a burndown of a real building and to several out-of-control bonfires – and in those cases, when fire is REALLY out of control, it just sounds like white noise. I did much better with a controlled (but still pretty raging) fire in my backyard, where I could stack up extra lumber when needed, capture the sound of sizzling coals, layer multiple tracks, etc.

Likewise, Class 4 whitewater rapids sound a lot like WWHWAHIIRRAAAOOSDSOSPPPLrAAUIIISSHSHHHHHHHHHH!!!! and I think would stress out even the most sophisticated recorder.

Recording “Fire” for Season 1 of The Cleansed. In the end, making my own controlled fire was the best way to do this

However, on this particular river there’s an opportunity to climb aboard the Raft on a milder 2nd half which descends into Class 3, then Class 2, then Class “Sit back and enjoy a beer” rapids. Here I could have totally gotten away with bringing the rig I found myself really wanting – the NTG-2 and the PCM-M10 – and I would have had the right tools for the job.

Still, all was not lost. After all, Aural Stage had done an awesome job with the sound design and all I was looking for were a couple flourishes. Mostly, I kept listening to the river a lot, asking myself, “Is there something about the character of the river itself that is unique and hard to replicate using foley?”

What I picked up on, sonically, was that the one distinct sound was the initial sploosh when the boat hit the water. There was a distinct sound to the crack of the boat into water that only happened when we were at substantial velocity. Slower waves just give you a ‘splat, splat, splat’ whereas the good rapids have a solid ‘whuuuummpp!’ with some real depth of body. So I cut out maybe 3-4 moments in the field recordings where we had good crashes, no one screaming and a minimum of peaking, then went to work seeing if I could rescue the takes and make them broadcast-worthy.

Gimme Some RX

Here I give a shout-out to Izotope RX (a sponsor of Aural Stage Studios) whose RX tool did amazing things to the lo-fi recordings off the MP3 player. I am kind of an idiot-savant (or maybe just an idiot) but after running a ‘Declip’ tool and EQ’ing off some high end, the tracks sounded a lot more usable to me:

Izotope RX - repair peaked water rafting clipping

This audio was originally so peaked it was unusable. With a bit of RX, it was perfectly serviceable and we used it low in the mix to add breadth to the little canoe crashes in this scene

There’s a lot more that RX will do for you – spectrum analysis, decrackling, noise removal, etc. but having used it for about 5 minutes total, and being able to improve audio to the point where I could do something with it, was a straight up miracle in my book.

The Final Audio

So 2-3 hours of dialogue recording, at least than much (or more) in sound design, 3 more hours whitewater rafting and then an hour or two more playing with the mix, we have this four minute sequence of audio drama. I hope you like it.

finalrune · Descending the River – From The Cleansed S2E2

Takeaways if you’re thinking about trying to record audio on a river:

Less can be more, even when you’re talking about big boom sound effects.
If you leave a recorder home because you’re afraid it’s going to get wet… Bring it anyways (a ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are made for).
That being said, the cellophane baggie, duct-tape and water-resistant recorder set all worked great. Nothing would have survived being thrown off the boat, but, if you get thrown off the boat you should not be worrying about a sound recorder anyways.
Remember to sit back and enjoy the ride. Rivers are damn beautiful.

Disclaimer: RØDE is an in-kind donor to FinalRune and gave us the NTG-2 and SmartLav mics. We purchased the BLIMP and NT-4 long before they sent us gear, and our opinions have not really been shaped by the fact that they gave us schwag. They also did not suggest, recommend, or otherwise encourage us to take equipment designed for nice peaceful video interviews into a Gorge. That was our idea.

FinalRune Visits Audio Legend Tom Lopez

FinalRune Visits Tom Lopez of ZBS in Fort Edward, NY

Fred Greenhalgh and Tom Lopez, audio dramatists

On Easter weekend 2012, Fred headed out across two-lane roads of NH, VT and NY to visit Tom Lopez at the ZBS Foundation‘s headquarters, an 1800s farmhouse in Fort Edward, NY.

A lot of radio history was made at this unassuming location sitting on 33 acres in the heart of New York’s dairy country. By the early 70s, Lopez had DJ’ed in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Montreal, but he, along with some radio co-conspirators, were looking for a place to set down roots. That very nearly became New Orleans, but providence brought them to upstate New York instead.

In the early days, the commune hosted as many as 18 people, who lived, played, and made art on the farm. The freeform audio artistry merry mayhem resulted in the 1972 Fourth Tower of Inverness, the wildly original tale of a funky mansion that mixed up 50s radio motifs, mysticism, and gonzo gurus with enigmatic characters such as Jack Flanders, Little Frieda, Lady Jowls, and Chief Wampum.

Later, as Tom traveled the world collecting sounds all across the world, from Morocco to the Amazon, this was where the actors would get together to record the stories Lopez set in the exotic locales. Today, Lopez continues to create, having transitioned most of his recordings across the digital divide and experimenting with formats and distribution on the internet. As Fred arrived, Tom was in the midst of organizing the recording for Ruby 9, what will be the penultimate and final Ruby.

It was joy to soak up the radio waves (as well as to enjoy delicious victuals prepared by Tom’s wife, Marika). Among the interesting tidbits: ZBS was really podcasting before podcasting existed. Their shows, particularly Ruby, were released in short, serialized segments offered free to radio stations. Listeners would catch little nuggets of the story, and be given a phone number to call up ZBS to get a full catalog (these were in the days pre-internet). This method of giving the content for ‘free,’ while attracting something valuable – subscribing listeners – has helped keep ZBS going through the collapse of public radio funding and into today.

There’s no producer in the world quite like Tom. Not only has he released over a hundred hours of boldly original drama that pushes the boundaries of audio, he has done it without institutional support, giving him a creative freedom enjoyed by few artists on the globe. While trekking reel-to-reel and Sony Beta recorders into the Amazon might have been conceived by Hollywood sound designers, no one before Tom ever thought to go to such trouble for an audio production.

In the midst of the visit, Tom and Fred sat down for a long chat about life, the universe, and everything… All least, insofar as it relates to radio drama.

Take a listen here:

finalrune · 2012 – 05 – 18 – -tom – Lopez – Interview

See some photos from Fred’s trip:

Our South African Love: The Sony PCM-M10

Part 1 of our series of articles on gear Fred used in his adventures across South Africa in Winter 2012

It’s no secret that I love field recording and especially handheld flash-based audio recorders. I’ve carried a Zoom H2 since they were introduced in 2007 and moved on to try out most of the rest of their line including the Zoom Q3, Zoom H4n and the Zoom H1. However, in preparation for my forthcoming trip to South Africa for five weeks it was time to take stock of my recording arsenal and ensure I had the right tool for the job.

The core requirement of my audio gear is that it had to fit into a single backpack along with all my other belongings for the full 5 weeks. And of course, I need to collect fantastic audio.

I had recently purchased the Zoom H4n which served me well as a backup/supplementary recorder for sessions of The Cleansed, but when I took a hard look at it and my backpack, I felt it was time to shop outside my much beloved Zoom brand.

The Candidates

You can lose yourself for weeks in web research for these types of gadgets; I cut my search short by reading some of the fantastic audio gear reviews by Jeff Towne up at Transom.org. Towne’s review of the Marantz PMD-660 led me to buying that recorder back in 2006, which still serves me well today, and I highly appreciate his hands-on, practical approach to reviewing especially considering his public radio background (NPR freelancers, while very different from audio dramaturges, look for many of the same requirements as us).

It was there I first read about what was to be my new love – the Sony PCM-M10.

I’d never had the pleasure of owning a Sony portable recorder though I’d lusted over the PCM-D50 for years. The highly talked-up built-in mics, solid mic pre-amps, tough build quality and durability were all factors I liked. However, its $500 price tag, lack of XLR inputs, and just-a-little-too-bigness kept us away.

I found that the smaller cousin, the PCM-M10, had many of the features of the D50, as well as a few others that suited my needs as a lightweight, durable secondary field recorder:

Small form factor – Very close in size to the Zoom H2, about the smallest a recorder can be while still having a professional set of features.
Solid built-in mics – The omni mics on this recorder get a fair amount of (deserved) cricism for their limited stereo response, more important than stereo though is usable quality and for my type of work they fit the bill (mainly recording ambiences with occasional spot FX here and there).
Incredible battery life – This is truly legendary. I don’t know that I’ve ever had an electronic device that has performed as well on this front. I got through almost the entire 5-week trip on a single set of AA batteries. The only reason I needed to swap them out is that I once accidentally left the recorder on overnight and it recorded 8-hours straight of audio without putting up a fuss.
MicroSD Card Support – For about $30 I purchased a 16GB SD card which allowed me around 24 hrs of 24-bit/48Khz recordings.

There are a few other things I learned to love about this recorder which I’ll talk about momentarily. These were the features which sold me on it. Within a few days of reading Jeff’s reviews I had one on the way from BH Photo/Video.

Unboxing and Beyond

The Zoom H2 and Sony PCM M10 are almost identical in size. The PCM M10 is a bit slimmer and heftier. It lacks the surround capability and computer interface of the Zoom, but offers robust professional features such as a manual input gain knob instead

My first impression with the recorder was that yes, this was in fact as small as it looked on the internet. It also feels like a professional piece of equipment; holding it side by side with my Zoom H2, the Zoom feels like a toy and the Sony like something for grown-ups.

When I first starting doing this in 2007 I probably wouldn’t have noticed (nor been able to appreciate) the differences, but at my current level of experience here are the features that really stuck out:

Manual recording level input knob – If I could name only one feature that makes this recorder a better buy that some of its competitors, this is it. Having the ability to really control your input levels (vs. the Low, Medium, High response on the Zoom) is what separates a mainstream device from that of the audio professional.
Mic Sensivitity Low/High – Related to the above issue. Mic sensitivity should be on high most-times, but gosh, having the option of ‘Low’ helps out a lot when an unexpected lightning storm comes rolling in overhead.
Built-in Limiter – One of those features that you hope you never to need to use. But when you do, you’re glad you have it.
Cross-memory Recording – This feature speaks to Sony’s thoughtfulness of the recordist. If you run out of memory on one of two sources on this recorder (built-in memory or memory card) the recorder can automatically keep recording on the other media to keep you from losing material. Less expensive recorders would just quit on you, or worse, lose the recording you were working on.

I felt pretty good about my decision. And then I packed on a plane and flew halfway across the world.

Arriving in South Africa

Lesotho’s Sani Pass. Okay, so there weren’t any sound recording opportunities here but it sure was spellbinding

This was my first trip to the continent of Africa and though my wife had done a lot to prep me from her previous trips, there was still a lot of not-sure-what-to-expect-edness from my end. How remote would I really be? Would I be able to buy batteries? Would I be able to upload material to the internet while traveling? What would be my backup scenario if my recorder was stolen?

Not surprisingly a lot of what I thought going into the trip turned out to be wrong and several things I didn’t anticipate turned out to be headaches. South Africa is a modern country in many parts, but nowhere was internet really adequate for me to back up any source material onto the web. Batteries, on the other hand, were plentiful and I felt stupid for carrying 30 AA’s with me.

Perhaps the most useful feature of the PCM-M10 is its size. Not much larger than a smartphone, I could easily keep it in my pocket at all times as I wandered around in order to snag random audio recording opportunities you might otherwise miss. For example, this random ice cream truck on a street in Johannesberg:

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”joburg-ice-cream-machine.mp3″]

The minibus taxi rank in Maseru, Lesotho. Busier than it looks!

I did bring my trusty RØDE NTG-2 mic and dead kitten with me, but found that I made many fewer recordings with it than I expected. While the shotgun mic is far cleaner and targeted than the wide open and airy sound of the Sony’s built-in omnis, it was just a lot more equipment to pull out of my bag.

Practically speaking, I wasn’t going on a 20k hike with the shotgun mic nor would I travel a city street with it. Yet I could very take the Sony and clandestinely stoop in a building awning and record a busy market in Lesotho without attracting attention. Well, without attracting any more attention than you already do as a white person traveling that mountain country:

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”maseru-lesotho-bustling-market.mp3″]

To the random passersby, the size and built of the Sony looks comparable to a Blackberry. Interesting, maybe, but not unheard of. A fuzzy shotgun mic and headphones make you look a lot more like an alien.

That being said, outside of the urban centers I was a lot more brave taking out the shotgun mic, and recorded some amazing tracks in the remote village of Malealea of their jingling-belled sheep headed out to pasture:

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”malealea-sheep-am-rising.mp3″]

And I did have the opportunity to pull out the RØDE to record this fantastic thunderstorm. This alone was worth bringing the mic the entire trip.

We don’t get storms like this in Maine; while I have a lot of thunder/lightning tracks in my library none were quite as clear, crisp, and missing rain as these ones.

Here’s a nice clean sound of a thunderclap (good use of the lowered mic sensitivity!)

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”draks-thunder-crack.mp3″]

Why this is a Love Affair

Let’s be clear: the most important thing about any recorder is the material you come home with. You can wax and wane about this feature or that feature, but ultimately what matters is that you’re comfortable with the recorder, trust it, and can use it to do your work. In the field you need to know your recorder well enough to do basic troubleshooting if Google is 8,000 miles away. You need to know what you need to pack in order to feel confident you’ll get what you came for.

It’s for all these reasons that I love the Sony PCM-M10. It feels like it was made by someone who understands audio recording. There are lots of thoughtful small features that you don’t even realize you need at first. In some review I read somewhere they talked about Sony’s robust experience making recorders from the Minidisc days back to Beta – and let me affirm, this experience shows. I do still truly love the Zoom recorders, they are fantastic for what they are, but comparing the H2 to the PCM-M10 is like comparing a point-and-shoot camera to a SLR.

Fred toasts Yuri Rasovsky at the Sani Top Chalet, the highest pub in Africa. I learned of Yuri’s passing the 2nd week of my travels.

Like all love affairs, my tendency to gush shouldn’t overlook the flaws. The recorder is, after all, only $200 and cannot be perfect.

The built-in mics, while usable, are less useful than the X-Y cardioid inputs you see on most recorders of this size and, indeed, on its bigger cousin the D50.

Getting a windscreen to cover these mics is a nightmare. It’s pretty much a must to purchase a $50 windscreen to go with this recorder, but even so (at least the one I have, a Rycote) they don’t even stay on the recorder adequately without reinforcement. My solution was ultimately to hold the windscreen on using a rubber band. Surprisingly, this worked very well – but not exactly what you hope for when you spend 25% of the cost of the recorder on a windscreen.

Ultimately, what I don’t like about this recorder comes down to quibbles. For the cost, I feel I got an incredible value and can honestly say this recorder has changed my life in a small way: I’ll never be found anywhere without a portable audio recorder again. I’ve wanted a recorder that was small enough and good enough to go everywhere with me for years, and now I have it. Thank you Sony.

This is an unbiased review with no compensation offered to its writer. RØDE Microphones is an in-kind sponsor of FinalRune Productions. The author does profit for any products sold through product links embedded in this review.

Afterword

A few ‘notes for next time’ from field recording in South Africa – in case this comes in any for any other recordists out there:

Big game animals don’t really make any noise in their natural environment, and it’s practically impossible to capture usable sound while on safari. Go to a private reserve or refuge for a particular animal instead. South Africa has plenty of rescue centers for elephants and big cats, for example.
AA batteries really are everywhere, don’t bring too many. Only bother with specialty batteries, and even those seemed to be fairly common in South Africa (especially the touristy areas). Tourists with big digital SLR cameras have really changed everything.
Cables and connectors on the other hand, are practically impossible to find. Make sure you have every concievable one you want before you get on the plane. And maybe some extras.
Zip-lock bags are wonderful for packing. You don’t need any super special expensive gear bags.
My wife laughed at me but the Cocoon organizers are a great tool for organizing cables and electronic parts.
I did bring a Netbook with us which was a real treat to have. You would probably get a lot more battery life out of an iPad but I can’t imagine trying to do real work on one. I was worried about battery life but truth-be-told Ivhad enough access to grid power that I never needed the computer and found it impossible to get a charge. If you’re in the bush for 3 months that may be a different story.
Bring your recorder with you everywhere. Really. The one time I left it in our tent and ran to town I missed something really special.
Don’t let the fact that you’re recording something keep you from enjoying the place that you are. Remember that you’re a tiny fleck of dust on a gigantically massive universe and that this may be the only time in your life that you’re going to be able to record this very special moment. And then check to make sure your meters are good.