Recording bird sounds with iphone

[Ross Ahmed]

I have been using an Olympus LS11 for recording birds sounds, with a xeSennheiser MKE 300 shotgun microphone. It turns out I can use the Sennheiser microphone with my iPhone, and therefore I am considering selling the Olympus LS11.xe

The frequency response of the MKE 300 is 150 to 17 kHz. However is this response affected by the recording device ie would this large response limit be lost when plugged into iPhone?

[RKB]

Originally Posted by Ross Ahmed

I have been using an Olympus LS11 for recording birds sounds, with a xeSennheiser MKE 300 shotgun microphone. It turns out I can use the Sennheiser microphone with my iPhone, and therefore I am considering selling the Olympus LS11.xe

The frequency response of the MKE 300 is 150 to 17 kHz. However is this response affected by the recording device ie would this large response limit be lost when plugged into iPhone?

I think you mean 150 Hz to 17 kHz (or 150-17000 Hz).

Best thing to do is to record some high-pitched stuff and make some sonograms, and see what your maximum frequency is. If you're close enough to something when you record (try some captive screeching psittacines!), you'll get plenty of harmonics going beyond 12 kHz. If the iPhone can't handle them then you'll just get white space and an obvious chopping-off point.

Isn't the Ls11 a voice-recorder anyway? In which case, it's probably not much different from the iPhone in what it can handle. If you're just interested in recording sounds to listen to, rather than look at, then I wouldn't worry as you'll only be interested in sounds within human speech range anyway. But I'd worry that the connectors and gubbins in an iPhone wasn't up to much. You might find you get a lot of interference and hiss.

[Doggle Avaddit]

Here's a link showing the frequency response of the built in mic, so the iphone itself will record up to 20kHz.

iPad Audio Input Options Faber Acoustical Blog


The lack of bass response on the plot is no doubt due to the microphone, so the Sennheiser would probably go a lot lower, unless the iphone has some kind of built in High Pass Filter.

Both the iphone and the Olympus may well have "automatic level control" that you may or may not be able to turn off, and one may sound a lot better/be more useable than the other, you would have to suck it and see.





Edit: just realised the bottom graph is actually a direct signal sweep, so it does look as though the iphone bass response is deliberately poor at around 200Hz. I don't think this is going to affect birdsong recordings very much though.