Rockin' the mic with R2D2

August 8, 2007 10:08 AM

Bzzzzzz! Whirrrrr! Advice on field recording various sounds made by a robotic device, please.

I am working on a flash-based interactive demo of this thing, and I have to capture the various whines and whirrings, made by its several motors and servos, in a quick, easy, and inexpensive way. I can buy equipment, or rent it; anything goes but it's got to go cheaply. Bonus points for recommendations on uncompressed (native/raw) and compressed file formats for optimum performance and quality.

posted by Mister_A to technology (4 comments total)

Can you buy a cheap little RC car and just record up close to the wheels? You can get the drive wheel sounds and the steering servo sounds. If you stall the drive wheels, too, and record that high-pitched whine, that might be a nice addition.
posted by olinerd at 11:22 AM on August 8, 2007

Oh wait. If I'm misreading and you already have the hardware and you just want to know about the recording setup... then never mind :)
posted by olinerd at 11:23 AM on August 8, 2007

Get one of these cheap CD sound effects sets at a music store.

You can usually find something workable (or, if something's close, use audio processing software to make it work).
posted by chrisfromthelc at 11:23 AM on August 8, 2007

This should be pretty easy - so here's how I'd go about it. (disclaimer: I am an audio professional. I am not YOUR audio professional)

1. Definitely rent. There's places set up to rent you this kind of equipment, and if you're not going to ever use it again, it's orders of magnitude cheaper.

2. A pretty easy (nearly turnkey) setup would be a good quality condensor microphone coupled to a flash recorder. I'd reccomend (depending on your budget, and what the rental costs are) a Neumann KM184, or (on the cheaper end), an AKG C-414.

As for a flash recorder, I'm a fan of the Marantz PM660. It will provide phantom power (which will power the microphone), and record directly to a CF card. You can get quite a bit of mono audio out of a 2 gig card. Set it to record at mono, 16-bit, 44.1khz.

3. For the actual recording, google can provide you with plenty of guides. I'd say go with close-micing, for detail. If you need more, just let me know. I'll be glad to provide more detail.
posted by god hates math at 11:37 AM on August 8, 2007