January 14th 2014

A new toy arrived today, an Olympus ME-31 Condenser gun-microphone. For work I use full scale professional microphones and recording devices. The recording devises are over £3,000 and some of the microphones costing as much. Plus there is all the paraphernalia and so on, its an expensive business. But I, and my colleagues, are doing this for broadcast. In my spare time I still like to play about with sound and recently I've invested in a mini recorder, an Olympus LS-11 which we use a lot of the time at work and is absolutely brilliant for what I want, to have a small hand held recorder with me so that if something happens while out and about, I can make a recording. The results are superb for such a small kit, but what it is not good at is recording directional sound, say from a bird in a tree. This is because the microphones are at a 90 degree V on the machine, which is perfect for speech. I've therefore invested in a relatively inexpensive mini gun-microphone, which I'll trial over the coming weeks. As the name would suggest gun microphones can be pointed at the subject and  in simple terms focus on that sound rather than the ambient sound around it. So for example if a gun microphone is pointed directly at a singing bird in a tree, a clearer recording is made of the bird and the background ambiance of the woodland is reduced. Ideally a parabolic reflector and microphone would be used in this case but they are cumbersome and from my own experience can be frustrating as they can pick up too much background noise, such as a nearby road. So I plumped for the mini gun-mic which while it will never match the professional quality of my work kit, it is compact, easy to carry in a pocket and will I hope provide some fun in the weeks to come.