Transcription:
Hello folks! Steffen here, also known as Radiorobbe.
Since some of you have been wondering how my 24/7 street microphones work, here is a brief explanation of my setup. It's not very professional, but it's working fine for more than 5 years.
First of all, I apologize for the artificial version of my voice. It corresponds to my voice when I was about 10 years younger and was trained with some of my German podcasts from that time. I could try to stutter my way through the automatically translated text, but I'd rather not do that to anyone. Anyway, back to the topic.
First, the mics. These are two standard Primo omnidirectional electret capsules (EM272) attached to the outside window sill using simple metal clips. The capsules are available as ready-made microphones from various manufacturers for about $100, e.g. as Clippy EM272. These microphones have the advantage of being relatively discreet and can be used in almost any weather. Even if they get wet, they usually don't break easily. They do sound a little strange for a while, but once they dry out, they work fine again. Small fur windscreens are on top of the capsules. Unfortunately, they are not very effective, but at least they keep out small gusts of wind. The microphone cable is thin enough to go through the window frame without drilling. However, I put an extension cable between the mics and the sound card to avoid damaging the actual microphone cable when opening and closing the window.
Now to the signal processing. The microphone is currently connected to a cheap USB sound card, model Axagon ADA-17. It costs just around $20 and is one of the few sound cards in this price range with a 3.5 millimeters stereo microphone input. An audio recorder with a USB interface or a mixer might be a better solution, but a test showed that the sound quality of the USB dongle is hardly worse than that of an Olympus recorder, for example. I also wanted to keep the technical effort to a minimum, as there is currently no room for an additional mixing console. The computer is a cheap Beelink S12 Pro Mini PC. These computers are very quiet and energy-efficient, making them ideal for such tasks. Of course, you can also use a Raspberry Pi for streaming, which I have done when first setting up the mics. However, since the computer has other tasks that have nothing to do with streaming, a better solution was needed.
The rest is just software. The microphone signal is streamed to an Icecast server using the RadioCaster program. Then the non-public stream is archived in audio files of one hour each, allowing me to quickly cut out noise or special events from the stream, provided I know about them of course. Over the past 5 years, I have been able to collect a considerable number of odd and sometimes spectacular audio clips in this way. Lightning strikes, fighting cats, falling trees, and of course crazy people that I don't want to share with a wider audience for privacy reasons. In summary, I'd say that 95% of the time it's very boring, but for the remaining 5%, the technical effort was worth it.
Well, that's all for now. I hope I've inspired some of you to try your hand at building such a system. If you want to build your own, you can expect to spend around $200 to $300, with the computer being the most expensive component. Hhave fun!
At about 5:00 this afternoon while I was sitting in my backyard, I heard a steadily increasing buzzing sound above me. At first I thought it was our neighbor flying his drone over the area, but since the buzzing seemed to be coming from nearly everywhere, it must have been a huge swarm of insects. Probably bees, and according to the noise maybe even a whole colony looking for a new home. Either way, it sounded pretty impressive, if not a little threatening. My 24/7 street microphones also picked up the swarm, unfortunately mixed with the sound of passing cars.
Here's a binaural recording of about three minutes from my garden swing in the backyard. It was supposed to be longer, but the recorder's battery was almost dead, so I just let it run until it shut off automatically. It's nothing special, really. You can hear the typical sounds of my neighborhood. Construction in the distance, an airplane, a finch chirping, insects buzzing, the church clock striking 11. It was a bit windy and I didn't have my best windshield, so the recording is a bit messy.
Recorder: Zoom H1XLR
Microphones: Ohrwurm 3 (binaural)
Post-processing: ToneBoosters Compressor v4 + Barricade v4
This morning at 04:48 am CET, the burning of parts of a Falcon 9 stage could be seen over my home region. The spectacle was also audible, although it only sounded like distant thunder. My 24/7 microphones were able to record it.
I already own the H6 from the Essential series and was originally going to get the extra module with the additional XLR combo jacks + 3.5 inch input so I could connect my binaural microphones for mobile use. But since the plug-in module costs almost as much as an additional recorder, I bought the Zoom H1 XLR instead. It's also much smaller and easier to carry around. But it doesn't have internal microphones.
Here is a test recording where you can follow me on a short routine walk through my house. I go downstairs, across the house to the backyard, put some dirty laundry in the basket in the boiler and laundry room, get some snacks for the evening from the pantry, come back into the house, and go upstairs to my room. For this recording I used binaural ear microphones from a German manufacturer that unfortunately no longer exists. I intentionally recorded without a low-cut filter, but I had to apply a hard 8:1 compression because the microphones are extremely sensitive, and just normalizing the recording is not enough. It is fascinating how little background noise can be heard even with this level of amplification.
Last night I was awakened by a sound as if someone tipping a large bucket of water from the roof of the house through the downspout. It was melting snow that had accumulated on the roof and then fell all down at once. My window microphones picked up the sound, of course.
The lamppost in front of my house already has seen a lot in its life. It has been hit by cars and trucks at least twice, and then of course there are the many ugly politician faces on election posters that disfigure its pretty face every few years. The latest accident happened this morning when the Christmas tree for our village square was delivered. Unfortunately, it was a little too wide for the road and extended over the edge of the truck's bed. The poor lamppost got its head shaved off by the tree, with a rather unpleasant sound, but it's best if you hear it for yourself.
This recording was made outside my bedroom window just after midnight on August 29, 2024. You can hear the loud chirping of a cricket, as well as the typical noises of the night. An air conditioner is humming from somewhere, from time to time you can hear a soft rustling coming from different directions. Recorded using an Olympus LS-P4 and a pair of clippy EM272 microphones.
Recorded june 12th, 2022 around 1:40 in the morning. Beech martens are nothing special here, but it is the first time I was able to capture their noises directly under my bedroom’s window.
Two microphones are attached to the sill of my bedroom window and permanently record the surrounding ambience. It's probably one of those typical blindie projects, noone else hardly would come up with such nonsense. 😄 When I become aware of interesting sounds or situations, I cut out the relevant passages.
Here is five minutes of morning birdsong at sunrise. Usually you can hear a lot of car traffic outside my window, but in the night and early morning hours it seems like you're far away from civilization. The recording however ends with a distant car horn.
Hello, new here, some of you might know me from Elten. I'll post some of the stuff from my audio treasure blog here.
The following was recorded on april 9th, 2024 during noontime. A quite decent outside test using the XY mics of my new Zoom H6Essential recorder. It was slightly windy outside, so I put a cheap deadkitten over the mics.