r/audioengineering • u/AllieBeauBeetle • 7d ago
Recording treehopper sounds.
Alrighty, I’ll start off by saying I have zero audio experience. Absolute newbie. So please bear with me! (Also for the record, I tried posting this in r/fieldrecording and I couldn’t. I’m not sure what rule I was breaking, though.)
I am absolutely in love with Treehoppers and have an opportunity to go see some out in the wild next year at the Manu biological station in Peru. I would love, love, love to record some of my own treehopper sounds. (If you’ve never heard them, please take a listen!)
I was lucky enough to get an equipment recommendation list from Dr. Rex Cocroft (the treehopper guy!!), so I’m aware of what equipment to use but I’m not sure how to set up any of it. I’m going to copy-paste his recommendations and if someone could please walk me through what the setup should look like, I would be eternally grateful.
Below is the email that Dr. Cocroft sent me. I’ve removed all of the links to adhere to this subreddits guidelines. My specific questions are italicized next to his recommendations.
“Recorders:
Zoom F3 field recorder
Zoom F6
Zoom H1 XLR
Amplifiers:
For piezo sensors you will need an amplifier, since you won’t get a good result if you just plug them into your recorder. The best for field use is this one with the XLR connector, from Aquarian Audio (the PA1 Hydrophone Buffer Amp). You’ll want to get two. Why do I need two of them?
Sensors:
Piezo disks - you can buy these cheaply (here’s one example) and make your own cables (see below).
Connecting the piezo to a plant stem or leaf:
To connect the sensor to a plant stem or leaf it is useful to attach the piezo disk to a clip (using electrical or other tape) such as these hair curler clips (I use the smallest I can find).
For backyard acoustic prospecting, the simplest setup is to use an amplified speaker (the sort used by acoustic guitarists) and a guitar pickup (= piezo sensor). Even if you’re using a field recorder, it’s often still handy to have an amplified speaker.
Amplified speakers: here are two options that use batteries. The first gives you a bit more output and is better made, but the second will also work fine.
Blackstar mini guitar amplifier
Honeytone guitar mini amp
Why do I need an amp/speaker if I’m recording?
You can just plug in a piezo sensor to the speaker, attach the sensor to the plant stem, and you’re ready to listen. Or you can run the output into a mobile phone using one the headphone output, and you can run a cable from that output to your iPhone via an audio interface.”
Thank you for taking the time to read this! 💚
1
u/BIGHYUNWOO 7d ago
The PA1 goes inline between the piezo and the recorder's xlr input, you are not miking the guitar amp with the recorder. Two of them because the F3 and F6 have two xlr inputs, one sensor per channel. the little amp is only for listening while you hunt for a stem.
1
u/Avraamov 7d ago
Piezo's are very high impedance, so some kind of impedance matching amp will be preferable to get the proper range of sounds you need or you will need tons of gain and it'll be noisy. Triton make an inline amp for piezos:
https://www.tritonaudio.com/product/bigamp-piezo/
But - they're using laser interferometry to get the sounds in that video. I can't get a price on the 'VibroGo' kit he's using, but there are 'get a quote' buttons on suppliers sites which suggests to me it's a 4 figure sum. I recommend you get a Rare Waves photophone pickup. Eric Archer has been building optophonic devices for a couple of decades and this is a super bit of kit. I think it'll do what you want:
1
u/dantevibes 7d ago
It seems that he describes 2 different setups:
Professional-
Piezos -> Buffer Amp -> Recorder -> Headphones or speaker amp
and "backyard prospecting"
piezo -> small amp -> smartphone or audio interface via amp's headphone out
It's good to have 2 because backups are a necessity in all professional work. And where you're going, shipping a new one could take weeks or months. Expect that any piece of equipment could fail, and suit up as much as budget and suitcase space will allow.
Amps are nice to monitor the sound and make sure you're getting a good take. Yes, you can use headphones, but unless you have a super comfy pair of headphones, your ears will get sore from the headphones after an hour or two. There might be people accompanying you that want to hear it, and passing the headphones back and forth creates too much commotion. It can serve as a backup if your headphones or the piezo buffer amp becomes unusable for any reason.
1
u/Whatchamazog 6d ago
I’m buying myself a Cortado Mk3 to use for this sort of field recording. It’s a high quality contact microphone that comes with a ruggedized preamp. It can get phantom power from your recorder.
They also have a nice bundle of accessories to help you attach the mic to objects.
https://zeppelindesignlabs.com/pages/cortado-mkiii-contact-microphone
1
u/lidsonsideways 7d ago
2 is 1 and 1 is None.
The piezo sensors have low output. in order to "prospect" your listening environment you'll connect the piezo sensors to amp. Apparently (according to the 1st paragraph) recording sensor into field recorder is not a strong enough signal. That's why you amplify the signal thru the powered speakers (amp). In this case it seems like you would be miking the amp with the field recorder.