My portable audio recording rig for capturing outdoor sounds & ambiences.
You all might or might not be aware that apart from composing & producing music, I make sounds for games & animations. I've worked as a game audio professional with few game developers such as 2Pi Interactive & Darkmode Studio from India.
In this article, I'm gonna walk you through my portable audio rig which I use for recording ambience & outdoor sounds. I've recorded some amazing high quality sounds such as birds, rain, city ambience, forest ambience, thunder & lot more with this rig.
So let's start with the gears.
1. ZOOM H6 ( Handy Recorder ) - If you're into the field of audio or recording you might be familiar with the Zoom H6. Zoom has made & is still making some amazing innovative products for recording audio. In my case, Zoom H6 has helped me in achieving my desired goals for recording audio such as ambiences & organic sounds. It records audio in such an amazing quality that it was hard for me to believe when I heard the first recording I did with it. It can record audio up to 96Khz/24Bit which is very impressive & results in a great quality. It comes with Zoom XYH-6 X/Y mic capsule & Zoom MSH-6 Mid Side mic capsule which can be attached to the Zoom H6. With just these two X/Y & Mid Side mic capsules you can achieve a wide array of sounds. You can get another SGH-6 Shotgun mic capsule from Zoom separately. Apart from that, there are four mic/line inputs with XLR/TRS combo connectors. If all channels are used, it gives you the ability to simultaneously record six tracks. All the recordings are saved directly to SD, SDHC and SDXC cards up to 128GB.
I've mentioned some of the main features of the Zoom H6 below :
Interchangeable input capsules
Six-track simultaneous recording
Four mic/line inputs with XLR/TRS combo connectors
Gain control knobs and -20dB pads for each input
Supplied XYH-6 X/Y capsule provides secondary input via a stereo ⅛” Mic/Line In mini phone jack
Phantom power for all main inputs: +12/+24/+48V
Large full-color, angled LCD display
Records directly to SD, SDHC and SDXC cards up to 128GB
Up to 24-bit /96kHz audio in BWF-compliant WAV or a variety of MP3 formats
Auto-record, Pre-record and Backup-record functions mean that you'll never miss that perfect take
Built-in effects, including low-cut filtering, compression, and limiting
Multichannel and stereo USB audio interface for PC/Mac/iPad
Accepts standard AA alkaline or NiMH rechargeable batteries
Over 20 hours of operation with 4 AA alkaline batteries
2. Power Bank - The Zoom H6 can be powered by 4 AA batteries but in this case I'm using a 20,000mAh power bank by Xiaomi. With power bank, there's no hassle of changing the batteries again & again.
3. Gorilla Pod - I'm using a generic gorilla pod which I bought from Amazon for 500 Rupees ( Indian ). I mount my Zoom H6 on this gorilla pod.
4. Headphone - I'm using Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro (250 ohms) headphone to monitor my recordings. This is the only headphone which have for audio production. It has such a natural frequency response, you get what you hear. I use it while music production, mixing mastering & outdoor recordings. It has a closed back design which is very good for outdoor purposes & while recording.
5. Rode NT-1 A - The Rode NT - 1 A is an amazing microphone specially for recording vocals in a studio or a home studio environment. I mostly use it to record vocals. But, when it comes to outdoor or field recording, I keep it in my bag just incase if I need additional mics to record something. It is not ideal at all for field recordings but then there's no rule as well. For recording in a windy environment, I have to use a deadcat or similar kind of filter which filters the wind rustle noise.
6. Shure SM57 - The Shure SM57 is a legendary microphone used for recording instruments & vocals as well. I use this microphone in the studio mostly to record some vocals instruments & guitar amps. Similar to the Rode NT1 A, I keep this in my bag just if I need an additional microphone.
That's all with my portable audio recording rig. If you're a film maker, game developer or anyone who is looking for audio solutions such as sound effects, background music score, audio mixing for your project, you can contact me at raunakbarde0@gmail.com
Thank you for reading this post. I will post more such posts often. So stay connected.