Active noise reduction for motorsports?

F

fuzzybabybunny

Active member
I want to record some video logs when traveling on a motorcycle and while flying on my paramotor. There's a lot of engine and wind noise.

It seems that most people who do this buy a bluetooth comms system from Sena which has all of that noise cancelling stuff, so I bought one but I've very unsatisfied with it. In order to record audio you have to buy additional modules which is just more $$$ for Sena. It's rapidly looking like a money pit. For example, there is no way to just output the clean audio to a TRS plug. You HAVE to buy another bluetooth device from Sena.

Are there any microphone systems with active noise cancellation that filter out the noise and output it via a jack?
 
OzGizmo said:
A headset with a noise cancelling microphone would be the way to go, as as you mentioned it will be in a lot of wind, try something like a Beyer talkback headset with a large / fluffy wind protection around it.

http://www.cameratim.com/reviews/audio/beyerdynamic-headsets/
Click to expand...

All I need is the microphone + noise reduction function. There are a lot of full headsets and even full helmets with noise reduction, but all I need is the microphone setup.
 
We'll in that case just buy the microphone and arm as a spare part and mount it on any thing you want.....
The way the noise cancelling mic works is there is 2 capsules mounted back to back and phase reversed to each other, so anything that comes into both capsules EQUALLY is canceled out and then anything that comes into one side more than the other goes to the output...... simple and effective.
 
Also you should know that the quality bar is going to be pretty low on this kind of thing because the noise canceling is going to F&^% with the voice quality quite a bit. That said I saw an article on these folks who do motorcycle reviews and such and the in helmet mic was actually sounding pretty good so it is possible but probably $$$.

If you are looking at narrative film like quality it's not going to happen. I worked on a large film that had a lot of ultralight shots and all the production sound from those shots was garbage and they had a good budget and really good production sound people. Just WAY too much wind and noise. Even the sound of the ultra light was replaced because of wind.
 
That Cedar box is nice, but not appropriate for this type of job.

Honestly, the thing to do is to buy the appropriate gear for the job that works. It may cost money, but good stuff always does. I don't do a lot of active noise cancelling stuff because on production those things don't end up giving usable audio for narrative, reality, or documentary work without the need for subtitles.

However, if you just want to record the sound of you talking while doing these things, and you have a full face helmet, you can possibly mount a lav inside the helmet and put fur over that. You can also mount a lav under your riding jacket (gotta ride safe) and put a lot of fur around that, but it's no guarantee once you hit higher speeds.
 
fuzzybabybunny said:
I want to record some video logs when traveling on a motorcycle and while flying on my paramotor. There's a lot of engine and wind noise.
Click to expand...

The problem here is that the engine noise in particular overlaps the frequencies used by voice. If you cancel the engine noise, you comb filter (among other artifacts) the voice, which sounds bad.

Passive methods may work best for you. I'm thinking an earset microphone (a Countryman E6 would probably work with a helmet) with a cardioid or hypercardiod capsule, located right at the corner of the mouth. This will give you about the best signal to noise ratio you can get.

Depending on wind noise problems inside the helmet, you may have to cover the mic with some kind of foam-and-fuzzy windblocker also. And of course use an 80 Hz high pass filter, more slope is better (24 dB / octave is reasonable), to knock down some of the low frequency wind noise.

Doing it like this (passively) will likely give you acceptable voice quality (hardly any artifacting beyond the odd bounces you'll get inside your helmet, if any), and likely give you acceptable signal-to-noise ratio. But you're not going to get Hollywood feature film dialog quality, for that you're likely looking at ADR.

fuzzybabybunny said:
Are there any microphone systems with active noise cancellation that filter out the noise and output it via a jack?
Click to expand...

I don't know of any. That doesn't mean there aren't any though.
 
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