Owner`s manual

Introduction to the Studio Foundation Sound Recording Kits v.5 (Sp13)
17
The recorder has a built in stereo microphone with two capsules in an X-Y
conguration. Each of the microphone capsules has directional characteristics.
If you want to record in stereo, point the front of the recorder towards your
source. In a situation in which you want the best mono recording, you’ll need to
take into consideration the directional characteristics of the built-in
microphones.
Microphone placement
LEFT
directional
microphone
RIGHT
directional
microphone
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For stereo recording with
the built-in microphones,
point the top of the
recorder towards the
source.
LEFT
directional
microphone 
(Channel 1)
For the best quality mono
recording into channel 1,
point the left microphone towards the
source (point the recorder about 60
degree angle towards the source and
favoring the front face of the recorder)*
Source
Source
Polar pick-up
patterns
* Note: In Adobe Premiere Pro you can take a stereo audio track
and choose to map either the Left or Right channel to both the
Left and Right channel, allowing you use only the Left or Right
channel as a mono recording.
Microphone
capsule
orientation
Front face
Introduction to the Studio Foundation Sound Recording Kits v.5 (Sp13)
Audio formats and sampling rates
recording the remaining information in an
ecient manner. This is relatively similar to
the principles used by JPEG, an image
compression format.
The recorders can record les in the WAV or
MP3 audio le formats using one of several
sampling rates including 44.1 kHz (the
audio CD standard) and 48 kHz (the Digital
Video standard). In addition, the bit depth
(number of digital bits used in encoding
each sample) can be set to16-bits or 24-
bits. With these recorders there is no
practical dierence between 16 and 24 bit
Image by Kordas, source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_rate,
released under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
Analog Signal
Digital Samples
Analog audio signals are digitized and
stored in a digital le structured in a
particular format. The WAV audio le
format encodes data using lossless
compression. Lossless means there is no
change to the audio as a result of
encoding into this format. This is the
format we’ll use for TIME assignments.
The MP3 audio le format uses a lossy
compression algorithm. Lossy means there
are noticeable dierences between the
original and the compressed version. MP3
was designed to reduce the amount of
data required to represent the audio
recording and still sound acceptable,
however, it does not sound as good as
uncompressed audio. An MP3 le created
using a bit rate setting of 128k bits per
second will result in a le that is about
about 1/10th the size of the same le
stored in the WAV audio format. MP3
compression techniques use
psychoacoustic models to discard or
reduce precision of signal components
less audible to human hearing, and
recordings in most circumstances, so stick
with 16-bit recording, which will be
compatible with Final Cut Express.
The recorders can record to MP3 les at
several data rates (64kbps to 320kbps).
The higher the rate, the better the quality
of the sound. MP3 is idea to use when
minimal le size is the priority, for
example, recording a lecture or when
sharing les that will be downloaded over
the web. You can always convert high
quality audio to MP3, so work with WAV
les for recording and editing and
convert to MP3 later if needed.
The Bottom Line
For your TIME assignments, set the
audio recorder to:
• Sampling Rate: 48 kHz
• Record Format: WAV, 16-bit
this is the digital video standard we
recommend for your eld audio
recordings.
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