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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

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  1. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Interesting. I sometimes see what I think are bats in my recordings, but they are not that high frequency - generally 15-20 Khz. My mics (and most mics in general) only work up to 20Khz, so even if I record at 192Khz, I don't think the mic can pick up most bat calls. I have an ultrasonic bat...
  2. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Good point. The only thing I would say is that I think knob controls are better for mobile recording. Push button controls seem to me easier to use in a static deployment, when you have the recorder on a tripod. So whereas you can control headphone volume, given the odd shape of the F3, the...
  3. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Not sure I understand why so high? 44.1KHz is CD quality and gives a reasonably rendition of sound up to 20KHz. Most bird vocalise below 10KHz. So surprised why 96 KHz or 120kHz ‘would be perfect’. It would be interesting to see if you can do a phase inversion experiments to see if you can...
  4. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    There is no gain control on the F3. But this is the rub of 32bit float. Gain settings become unimportant, so why design 32 bit float recorders to have knobs to control gain levels in the field? If you want to control gain, I would go for a 24bit recorder. There really will be no difference in...
  5. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    I think it is good with a parabola, however, I don’t think you will see an amazing sound difference - THD, signal to noise ratio etc are pretty good on most modern recorders. For me the benefits are easy of use - 32 bit float (so no need to monitor), 2 No. XLR inputs (obviously if you have a...
  6. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Yes, quite amazing - we can hear a faint bird call in the cacophony of noise. But on the flip side, we can equally become fixated with the 'unwanted noise'. Once I have heard something that distracts from a recording, I find it virtually impossible to then mentally filter it out! I take the...
  7. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    So far so good, but I have not been using the recorder as extensively as a should. Interested to know why you ask about 'moist environments' - from a quick web search I can't see any complaints about the recorder acting up in humid conditions. Do you know of any problems? I don't like the...
  8. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Good point. The same website states; 'To increase the sampling rate by M times, the signal is interpolated (interleaved) by zeroes. This preserves the spectrum below the Nyquist frequency, but creates spectral images (copies) above the Nyquist frequency. These spectral images are filtered out...
  9. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Answering my own question, it does appear as if the sampling engine (Sampling Rate Conversion algorithms) can have a minor impact on quality. See SRC Comparisons for test of SRC's. If I look at some of the software I use, then Spectral Layers 9 seems the noisiest, with Audacity, Reaper and...
  10. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Joop, can you explain further? Firstly, why does down-sampling come at a price - and do you think this depend on the software used? My understanding is that with a WAV file (and presumably a good export engine), there should be no real loss of quality across most of the frequency range if you...
  11. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    I don’t think you do. But as memory is cheap, for those who feel the need, it is not a crime to record at a high sample rate and export later to a lower rate. You can always reduce the sample rate in an export, but increasing the sample rate in an export doesn’t add anything.
  12. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    I don't really think the sample rate is that important. 44.1KHz is the sampling rate used for music CDs, which sounds pretty good. The general rule of thumb is that the sample rate should be at least twice the frequency of the thing you are trying to record. Our hearing limit is less than...
  13. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    The conversation was too technical for me to follow. Without trying to upset either side, the argument seems to me slightly academic. Once you have invested in a mic, the powering requirements will often govern - as I understand, XLR for phantom power and mini-jack for PiP. If you have plumbed...
  14. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    I think the F2 could be good for drop rig mono recordings, perhaps using the supplied lavalier - I read somewhere that a well placed cheap lavalier will outperform a distant pro shotgun every time, so just a problem of making sure you place it well! The F2 could also be used with PiP mics used...
  15. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Just had my first play with the F3 with a Parabola (full comments in Small (But Good?) Part 5, which I posted today. The F3 is impressive. My main bug bear is the battery compartment. If you use the rails (and probably the tripod mount) to fix the F3 in place, then the battery compartment is...
  16. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    For me the great thing about the F3 is two XLRs with phantom power in a small 32 bit float recorder. I am therefore looking forward to trying to make my cumbersome parabola, slightly less cumbersome to use. Some parabolas actually have too outputs - either because they produce stereo recordings...
  17. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    I would agree that this is a real beauty of 32bit float, and have opted at times not to monitor recordings at all - just wing it and adjust in post. Are you using headphones at all to monitor the recording, or just relying on your judgement of whether the signal to noise (i.e. how loud the...
  18. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    I think that 32 bit float is really all about post production editing - it allows a signal above 0dBF to be pulled back and also allows a low signal to be normalised to -3dBF (as per Xeno Canto guidance) without adding significant noise due to the low the noise floor. Post production and...
  19. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Just spoke to a UK supplier and looks like Zoom has made a bit of a mess with the launch date information. The initial date of end of Feb for UK distribution, now looks like it could be mid summer!
  20. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Hi Horukuru, The bit depth determines the dynamic range of the recording. In a a nutshell this means it sets the difference between the loudest and quietest thing that you can record. With a 16 bit integer you can have values from 0 to 65,535. The number zero equates to 0dBFs (the loudest...
  21. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Post at speed - repent at leisure! Just realised that my concerns above are rubbish! Somehow I was thinking that increasing the levels in post would amplify mic noise, so that 32bit float was only really of benefit for bird recordings to prevent clipping. My rationale then was that gain...
  22. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    In answer to my own question, I found a Utube video, which shows the device has a zoom factor. This seems to be gain control by a different name. The factor doubles up so 1,2,4,8. The video showed zoom factors up to 1024, with the latter sounding noisy, but not sure how much was mic noise. I...
  23. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    BHP now are advertising at USD349.99. Normally the USD and GBP prices seem to match 1 for 1, so I suspect this will be the £350 mark in the Uk. Shouldn’t be too long to wait now. Does anyone know any details on the gain level? I can’t see it in the spec sheet. The bumf suggest that the gain is...
  24. J

    new tiny Zoom F3 recorder

    Interesting option. Looks like a good compact solution. I have been wondering if 32 bit float recorders will open up the opportunity for minimal setups - basically a mic, a short cable and the recorder. One photo in the press relief shows basically what I was thinking of - the recorder...
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