Which mic & headphone are better

[Ashok Mansur]

I would like to know, which mic & headphone are better ,And these are some of the models available in India. the list follows.
1,Sennheiser K6 Powering Module.
2,Sennheiser ME67/K6 Shotgun Microphone.
3,Sennheiser ME67/K6 Shotgun Microphone.
4,Sony ECM-672 Shotgun Microphone.
The Headphones are,
1,Behringer HEADPHONES HPS5000.
2,Behringer HEADPHONES HPX2000
3,Behringer HEADPHONES HPX4000
4,Globalmediapro HP-11M Stereo Headphones.
My aim is to get get clear unintrupted sound of birds & with this how far I can record the sound. do I require other materials like softie etc.
Ashok Mansur

[Steve House]

If your goal is to clearly record bird calls in the wild you need to look into something called a parabolic microphone where a microphone is combined with a parabolic dish reflector. Shotgun mics, no matter from whom, DO NOT magnify distant sounds. They are not like a telephoto lens on a camera, bringing distant objects closer. They are less sensitive to sound arriving from the sides and rear so you can increase the recording gain of the desired sounds coming from the front without also boosting the noise coming from the sides but even so, their effective working distance is a few metres at most.

[Ashok Mansur]

Thanks Steve,
You did't specify which make ( parabolic). one more thing, The stock mic is omni direction & I require unidirection mic, Think shotgun are unidirectional.
Ashok Mansur

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Ashok Mansur

Thanks Steve,
You did't specify which make ( parabolic). one more thing, The stock mic is omni direction & I require unidirection mic, Think shotgun are unidirectional.
Ashok Mansur

Do a google search for "parabolic microphone" and you'll get a number of references and you can also build your own as well using a cardioid or hypercardioid mic as the pickup. The essense of them is the mic element sits at the focus of a parabolic reflector dish that concentrates the sound falling on it.

Shotguns are indeed the most unidirectional of conventional mics but that just means they are less sensitive to sounds from the sides and rear than they are to sound from the front. By itself that is not enough to make them suitable for clearly recording 'up-close-and-personal' the sounds of a bird singing in a tree 100 metres away from you unless that birdy has got one h**l of a set of pipes and is singing at the volume of a jet airplane. People tend to think that a shotgun mic is like a telephoto lens on a camera, somehow isolating and magnifying distant sounds, and I'm afraid they just don't work that way. Unidirectional though they be, they aren't any more sensitive to faint distant sound than is any other microphone type. That bird 100 metres away will be recorded no louder with a shotgun than it will with an omni, the difference between them being that other extraneous sounds coming from the sides and rear will be less with the shotgun than they would be with the omni.