From: Damien Hall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Dialectological recordings with head-set microphones?
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tuesday, April 5, 2011, 6:05 AM

PLEASE NOTE MY NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS / PRIÈRE DE NOTER MA NOUVELLE ADRESSE ÉLECTRONIQUE

Does anyone here have experience of making phonetic-dialectological (or sociophonetic) recordings with a headset mic?  Please, I'd be grateful for your reflections, whether they're to do with the technical phonetic aspects of this post or the advantages and disadvantages of doing socially-focused work with an intrusive mic.

I am putting together my kit for a dialectological project in France.  Materials to be analysed will include both formal (a word-list and reading-passage) and 'informal' (conversation).  I obviously want the cleanest possible recordings;  for projects where naturalistic speech isn't important, that might indicate a headset mic, but dialectology and sociolinguistics aim at naturalistic speech, and it seems to me that a headset isn't the way to go for that, as presumably it would be nigh-on impossible to forget you were wearing it!  I'd therefore go for a tie-clip mic, but Bartek Plichta says here

http://akustyk.org/blog/bartek-plichta/directional-microphones-and-vowel-shifts

that such mics are prone to distortion at a number of frequencies, including crucially the low end (below 300Hz) because of the cardioid design and proximity effect, if I've understood him correctly.

Cleanness of the signal is obviously generally important, but it's particularly important for me because I want to look at French nasal vowels, and in nasal vowels in general the crucial information is exactly in the low-end area that Bartek says is prone to amplification by cardioid mics!  So, has anyone got any tips for resolving the conundrum of

- wanting the cleanest possible signal, but
- not wanting low-end distortion of the type that our most-favoured style of mic can bring?

Many thanks!

Damien

--

Damien Hall

University of Kent (UK / Royaume-Uni)
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, 'Towards a New Linguistic Atlas of France'
Projet de recherche: 'Vers un Nouvel Atlas Linguistique de la France'

English Language and Linguistics, School of European Culture and Languages
Section de Langue et Linguistique Anglaises, Faculté de la Culture et des Langues Européennes
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