nice ambience mic for DSLR etc. cams.

sonidista

sonidista

Active member
As an alternative to the usual suspects (Rode etc.) I'd like to suggest binaural orginal head microphones. They look like like plug-in headphones. I've used them with my Canon 550d. Really nice, light, plugged them directly into the cam. Gives a great stereophonic acoustic reproduction. Strictly for ambience, though, not dialogue. Good gadget for documentaries. They hear what you hear. To prevent wind noise on exteriors I just wear a woolen hat on my head. The mic I have is called Soundman OKM II Klassik. I am not affiliated with this company, by the way, I just own one and like it.

http://soundman.de/en/intro_en.html

They also have sound samples on the website (listen with headphones!)
 
Where's the sensitivity specification? From what I can gather from the specs, these may not have sensitivity to record soft ambient sounds without adding their own self noise. This system lists a s/n ratio of around 60 db. Compare this to the MKE-416 which is 81 db. Not such a big deal when recording loud music, or louder sfx, but I would think you would definitely have to fight with the self noise when recording room tones, or quiet outdoor ambiences. In addition, typically you would see a deviation spec for the frequency response.
 
they offer a small preamp if you're going to record really quiet stuff. But from my experience, I can tell you that the SNR is okay. By that I mean that as long as you record significant sounds,there won't be noticeable self noise. So there is the almost philosophical question of what is significant. But I think to record room tone you won't need a binaural microphone, nor any stereo mic. For nature ambiences this mic does it well. But be careful that there are different versions of this mic. The rock version is indeed less sensitive than the classic version. Thats why I recommend the latter for film work.
 
We've used mics like these when "stealing" BG's in places like bars or other public places where you don't want to be obvious your recording. They probably won't work well for nature recordings where the levels are really low but then you can haul out the big boys.

Self noise is not much of an issue for what we used them for because things like "bar backgrounds" they are going to pe pretty far down in the mix.
 
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