Sound Recording Equipment

I’m often asked what equipment I use to make my nature recordings, so I thought it would be helpful to create a page as a reference to answer the question.

Many field biologists and nature enthusiasts use highly directional microphones or a parabolic dish setup to record bird and animal sounds, as this approach is good at zooming in on the calls of individual species. However, my goal is to record the soundscape as a whole and reflect the natural hearing experience we get from our own two ears.

To achieve this, I use a couple of different setups but both are quite similar and based on the same principles. I’ll focus this article on my ‘A’ setup and write some details on my newer ‘B’ setup in the near future.

In my ‘A’ rig, I use a pair of Audio Technica AT4022 omni-directional microphones which are outstanding in range and clarity and able to pick up even the most delicate sounds. To capture a realistic stereo image, I mount the two microphones on each side of a DIY parallel boundary array (which is basically a small, lightweight box made to specific dimensions) and the mic’s are spaced approximately 20cm apart, which is similar to the distance between our two ears. I have found the results of using this setup to be very natural – try listening on a set of good, comfortable headphones to fully appreciate the stereo image and sense of space.