Which Mic? Please listen.

[Colin McDonald]

The ME-66 is presenting a lower noise floor.. .

Eh?
It's a noisier mic by 5 dB (but that's still pretty good for a shotgun. Røde's NTG-3 is 3 dB more).
OK that's just the self noise, but looking at the files in any editing software, it's very easy to see a higher noise floor from the ME 66. The extra noise can also clearly be heard, so how is that 'presenting a lower noise floor'?

Unless I have been misunderstanding the term 'noise floor' all these years?

EDIT: I clearly need to put more water in my whisky - see later post.

[Finn Yarbrough]

Colin, if we can both hear and see excess noise in one of the samples during the "silence" portion, then one of us has the two mics backwards.

I can hear more during the silence in the file called "mic #1." That's the Rode, if I read correctly.

Am I confusing "Noise Floor" with "Signal-to-Noise Ratio?"

[Rick Reineke]

Noise floor. There's significant acoustical borne noise in there.
My rough measurements are:
#1 -50dBFS (-61.5 LUFS int.)
#2 -54dBFS.(-66.5 LUFS int.)
The difference is insignificant for this.

[Colin McDonald]

Originally Posted by Finn Yarbrough

Colin, if we can both hear and see excess noise in one of the samples during the "silence" portion, then one of us has the two mics backwards.

I can hear more during the silence in the file called "mic #1." That's the Rode, if I read correctly.

Am I confusing "Noise Floor" with "Signal-to-Noise Ratio?"

[Grovel] No - it's MY mistake. I had the mics the wrong way round for some reason. A thousand apologies.[/Grovel]

I downloaded them again (this time in the right order) and checked. Here's a screen shot in Audacity
(I dumped one of the stereo channels (R) in each for clarity:

[Rick Reineke]

That's a strange looking waveform Colin. Looks like it's highly compressed (dynamic). Could be just the Audacity display.
Here's what I get:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/members/...-sf-11-pro.jpg

[Steven Digges]

Originally Posted by Finn Yarbrough

You have a voice for radio, by the way.

Finn, Thanks for the prop, but it made me laugh! I can't stand the sound of my own recorded voice. I am not ready to confess what this project is in it's entirety but I AM a part of it. With more than 20 years in the business I know my place is behind the camera, not in front of one. I tried to sweeten an audio track from this set up last night. I found it very difficult to EQ my own voice. I think I got it, but it was hard to know when to let it go.

Colin, You did use dynamic compression on that file, right. That was the first thing I noticed on your screen shot. Those files are dry, straight, from the camera. Mic, XLR, Sony pre-amps. I considered recording audio outside of the camera to avoid the Sony pre-amps. But look what mics I am using anyway. Overall, the recordings are good enough to work with in post. Nothing big to repair, just normal sweetening.

This is a work in progress, stay tuned. I could be back crying and screaming for help! Thanks for everyone's input.

By the way. I am recording with both mics but the ME66 gets discarded in post. The NT1A clearly gives me more of what I want to work with.

Steve

Steve

[Colin McDonald]

I had set the Audicity display for a larger than usual bit depth (16 bit) to look at the noise floor.
Here are the same files with the display set to 10 bit: