Wildlife Recording kit and how I started.

My recording kit

It has always been my objective to try and have the best possible recording set up that I could afford.

I started with a cheap £10 microphone and a £30.00 cassette tape recorder. An ITT Studio 60. My headphones consisted of a single hearing aid device I still have it all except the mic that I let my children use until it just stopped working.  In those days the best recordings were made on a reel to reel recorder, and of many manufacturers the ones mostly used  were Uhers or Nagras.

The microphones that gave the best results then and still do today were Sennheiser, Scheops or DPA. It took me 5 years and a lot of “brownie points” before I managed to get my first Nagra and I have always used their recording devices since.  They have never let me down wherever I have been in the world whether it be in the freezing wastes of the Arctic, the searing heat of the Australian outback or the 100% humidity of a tropical rain forest, they just keep on working and their sound performance is second to none.

This is not to say other recorders and microphones do not do a good job, I have a few of them as well, but I am a “Nagra” man at heart and that's that.

Reliable equipment is good to have but it always takes second place to the human skill and knowledge that gets you into position to make the recording in the first place.  Switching on a recorder is easy finding the subject to record and positioning a microphone is where the skill lies.

There is so much recording equipment available to use, and as i have not tried it all I am in no postion to offer advice, except that a good place to find it is by getting in touch with like minded individuals by joining the Wildlife Sound Recording Society (WSRS) all information to do this can be found on their website www.wildlife-sound.org

Information abounds there.

Enjoy.

Roger