Comparing Smartlav, Smartlav+, NTG-3, XYH-5 module (Zoom H5) and the FetHead Phantom

[raphb]

I’ve been comparing my audio equipment, now with the received and attached FetHead Phantom. For that purpose I recorded a metronome at about 1 meter distance, 6 ticks each microphone, recorded at -12dB and normalized at -18dB. I was expecting an improved noise characteristic, but it seems like the signal is just passing through.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/guvzz8syye814wd/mictest.wav


Smartlav into Samsung S5
Smartlav+ into Samsung S5
XYH-5 module into Zoom H5
NTG-3 into Zoom H5
NTG-3 with FetHead Phantom into Zoom H5

Here is the spectral frequency display.




What am I missing?

 

[Noiz2]

Well I could be sarcastic but...

It's hard to tell since it was not a controlled environment plus you mucked with it after the fact. Providing you didn't mess with the sonogram you can see the noise get less and less as things progress.
The low is probably room noise, the upper I assume is electronic noise from the crappy sound in on the phone on the first two.
The next one is probably just picking up more of the spectrum since it's a bigger mic.
the last two, basically say nothing. I actually would expect more noise having two mic pre's in a row so the Fethead must be pretty quiet. But you are still running it through the mic pre on the H5 so I'm not sure why you would expect less noise.

 

[raphb]

Mucked with the sonogram? No... Isn't it also congruent with what you're hearing in terms of noise? My environment isn't a sound booth but it also doesn't hum or anything. There could be street noise, but it would be discernible and not just a generic hum.

These were 5 separate recordings. I stitched together the WAV files after normalizing them to the same loudness, there is no electronic noise from the phone after I shut that one off and moved to the Zoom H5 recorder.

I expected less noise because I had to turn up the gain less on the recorder, so that the gain has to work less. If I would've used a Sound Devices 302 as a preamp and fed that into the Zoom H5 at the lowest mic gain (even without using a line level signal), that'd offer a better noise floor too right?

 

[Noiz2]

by "Mucked with the sonogram" I meant coloring the sections so they would show up more.

Room noise and street noise are broadband so they are going to show up over a wide range. I didn't see a "hum" but if you have one that is not "noise" but some bad connection or equipment design. I think though you are probably using "generic hum" to talk about noise.

The phone has noisy inputs, the recording to the phone have to go through that noisy stage so those recording will have that noise from the phone electronics. And it is quite visible in your shots. With that much self noise from the phone it doesn't really matter what you put ahead of it it's going to sound bad.

Gain is gain. You are still adding gain and you are going through two preamps both adding their own noise. IF you normally have to crank the input up over 50% on the H5 then maybe adding the inline preamp might help, but if the gain is decent and you don't have to crank it on the H5 then the difference in it's noise at 50% and 10% is not going to be much. On to that noise you are adding the noise of the inline preamp. So IF your recorders preamps are really noisy then the inline may help if not it won't. You can't go in line because the inline mic pre requires phantom power and line level inputs don't have phantom power.

IF your recorder has a true line level input (and not just a padded down mic in) then using an external mixer and going in line level will lower your noise almost always.
In that case you are not going through the recorders mic pre's so you get to skip any noise they would add. That is not an option with the FetHead, and I'm not sure if the H5 has a true line in to begin with, most hand helds don't.