From: Harvey Sanenbum <harvey50120@micro.net>

My neighbor raises quail and currently has a Bobwhite. I tried setting
up my Zoom H2 positioned three feet away from the bird today with AGC2
enabled, mics at high sensitivity, and mic volume around 90 or so. It's
chirp was captured but even though limited by AGC, I think I used way
too high of settings as the chirp components sound distorted.
Unfortunately, they work and I can't be with the recorder during
capture. Other than recording at 24 bit, which I always do, what should
my settings be? Thinking mic set to low or medium sensitivity, maybe
using one of the limiters instead of AGC, and mic volume at 50-60 might
be far better but not sure. Thank you in advance.

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From: Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com>

Harvey Sanenbum <harvey50120@micro.net> wrote:

My neighbor raises quail and currently has a Bobwhite. I tried setting
up my Zoom H2 positioned three feet away from the bird today with AGC2 >enabled, mics at high sensitivity, and mic volume around 90 or so. It's
chirp was captured but even though limited by AGC, I think I used way
too high of settings as the chirp components sound distorted.

This is how AGC works.

Unfortunately, they work and I can't be with the recorder during
capture. Other than recording at 24 bit, which I always do, what should
my settings be? Thinking mic set to low or medium sensitivity, maybe
using one of the limiters instead of AGC, and mic volume at 50-60 might
be far better but not sure. Thank you in advance.

No limiter, no AGC. Set one mike to maybe 20dB lower than what you had,
then set the other mike to 40dB lower. This is an old production sound technique that people use when they have no chance of getting proper
levels but have an extra channel. In post, pick the channel that is better.

Just as a reference, our eclectus parrot Coco is 105 dB/1m. This is very,
very loud. Birds are not really suitable for household living.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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From: Harvey Sanenbum <harvey50120@micro.net>

On 1/15/26 10:59 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:

Harvey Sanenbum <harvey50120@micro.net> wrote:

My neighbor raises quail and currently has a Bobwhite. I tried setting
up my Zoom H2 positioned three feet away from the bird today with AGC2
enabled, mics at high sensitivity, and mic volume around 90 or so. It's
chirp was captured but even though limited by AGC, I think I used way
too high of settings as the chirp components sound distorted.

This is how AGC works.

Unfortunately, they work and I can't be with the recorder during
capture. Other than recording at 24 bit, which I always do, what should
my settings be? Thinking mic set to low or medium sensitivity, maybe
using one of the limiters instead of AGC, and mic volume at 50-60 might
be far better but not sure. Thank you in advance.

No limiter, no AGC. Set one mike to maybe 20dB lower than what you had,
then set the other mike to 40dB lower. This is an old production sound technique that people use when they have no chance of getting proper
levels but have an extra channel. In post, pick the channel that is better.

Just as a reference, our eclectus parrot Coco is 105 dB/1m. This is very, very loud. Birds are not really suitable for household living.
--scott

I did a recapture today. Set the mic for MID and the level down from 90
to around 60. I did have the limiter on. Placed the same distance away
as yesterday and chirps peaked at around -8 to -12 dB. I don't think
the limiter activated or I should have seen this on the spectrogram(?).
Anyway, I then simply normalized to -3 dB and saved the edit.

The big difference between yesterday and today was that I captured the
audio of the birds moving around in their cages yesterday, but today
nothing but the chirping.

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From: polymod <polymod@optonline.net>

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message news:10kb2t5$esb$1@panix2.panix.com...

Just as a reference, our eclectus parrot Coco is 105 dB/1m. This is very, >very loud. Birds are not really suitable for household living.

Amen to that last sentence.
Years back one of my piano tuning customers rescued two baby Cardinals from
her back yard.
She kept them in separate cages in her living room, about 20 feet from the piano.
Approximately 240 strings to pull and those birds squawked at every one.
The things we do for love. And $.

Poly


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