Remembering PRESTAGS

Spetz suggested I do a sound recording

This is from my morning walk this morning. There were builders shouting at each other next door, but barely audible over the parrots.

Download Parrots on a cloudy winters day

Wonderful PRESTAGS Era Technology - Sony Earth-Orbiter CRF-5090

I picked up a wonderful old radio last week.

1972, made in Japan. That is almost half a century old.

Genuine PRESTAGS Era Technology. Would have been playing as the SPI classics came off the printing press.

It’s the Sony Earth-Orbiter CRF-5090. It really doesn’t get any cooler than a name like “Earth-Orbiter”. When it was released it must have been some pretty top notch kit.

It is big, heavy, and made of beautiful metal and chrome. Everything is rock solid unlike the junk made today. I bet most of today’s radios won’t be around in 48 years. And more to the point – it still works.

Here it is with the front cover closed, and then with the cover open next to my modern short wave radio, the Tecsun PL-880. I don’t think the modern one will be going strong in 48 years time.

It has a massive long aerial, and 9 bands including air band and marine band. The bands turn in an analogue cylinder with 3 bands showing at one time. Last night I was listening to the local AM and FM bands. I will need to play around with short wave.

I find it remarkable that it works so well. The circuitry must be primitive compared to the advanced circuitry now, and it obviously doesn’t have a PLL receiver or Digital Signal Processing and other features that enhance weak signals.

The sound is rich, crackles slightly until precisely tuned. It has a big shiny metal tuner with a fine tuner inside. Also a tuning meter. A little red light goes on inside the tuning band when a good signal is hit. All works fine. The main light works. The headphone jack works.

One great feature is that the front cover folds down, then slides in half way under the radio revealing a spectacular time zone map of the world, with a slider for calculating times. I love this map.

No power cord came with this radio but it did also originally hold batteries. Someone more technical than I has rigged up a pack inside the battery compartment than uses 10 x current AA batteries. This is the only post 1972 modification that I can see.

Why don’t we make solid beautiful equipment like this anymore instead of plastic junk with built in 3 or so years redundancy.

I found some history on radiomuseum.org.

Sound Recording 3 - Padua, Italy

Our trip to England and Italy in May was far more of a photography trip than a sound recording trip. I took three cameras, plus photos on the mobile phones of the boss and I. The folder of photographs after the trip is over 45 GB and has over 6,000 photos!

In Padua we stayed in the Hotel Casa del Pellegrino with a wonderful view of the Basilica of St Anthony across the street. In the photo below, our room was the two windows to the right of the circular ornament with cherubs.

Looking out of our balcony window, here is a view of the street and the Basilica using a fish eye lens.

We spent a lot of time in the Basilica and exploring Padua, and I didn't do much recording. One early morning I put the Tascam DR 100 and Sony stereo mic in the flower pot on the balcony. While the view was spectacular, the recording was only of light birdsong and traffic driving up and down the street.

Here is a tiny sample, slightly interesting because it captured two camera clicks, probably taking the photo above. Remember the volume may need to be turned up. With the car driving past, the stereo should come out clearly on stereo headphones or two spaced speakers.

Padua Birds Camera Car

A WavePad view of this sound snippet.

When I analysed the whole recording afterwards I found the best bit. The bells of the Basilica!

Basilica St Anthony Padua Church Bells

A very distinctive pattern in WavePad.

The Basilica bell tower.

We treated Padua as a pilgrimage, and it was just as uplifting as our previous visit long ago in 2007. Lots of wonderful memories and photographs of Padua, and nice to have a few sounds as well.

 

Sound Recording 2 - Some Sounds of Malaysia

I took three of my recorders to Malaysia in January. At the small end, a Zoom H2n (very small with alternate patterns, can place anywhere) and a Zoom F1 field recorder (my favourite little recorder for lavalier mics pinned to clothing, but can also use interchangeable microphone capsules with different patterns). At the medium end, a Tascam DR-100 Mk III, my favourite travel recorder which has two XLR slots and phantom power for external recorders. I took a small external Sony ECM-MS2 Stereo Electret Condenser Microphone with a windjammer.

Now that I'm more confident with the durability of my top end recorders and mics, I will take fancier gear overseas on my next trip (hoping for a next trip!).

A few different sounds.

We spent some pleasant mornings on the Indian Ocean at a resort on Batu Ferringhi beach (West side of Penang Island). Some people make sand castles but I make microphone castles. Here is a view of the beach, and a castle with the Zoom H2n.

My better equipment, the Tascam and Sony external mic, also came out. I used this on a beach chair facing the ocean, and I took long soundscapes of over an hour.

Here is a snippet of Indian Ocean Waves:

Batu Ferringhi Beach Malaysia Waves

One evening the Boss and I had a very pleasant pre-dinner drink at the resort, at a nice outdoor bar near a fountain. I placed the F1 with a stereo capsule on a rock next to the fountain.

Resort Fountain:

Malaysia Resort Fountain

I find the sound relaxing. The sound wave is distinctly water - loud and regular.

Back at the In-Laws family home in George Town I recorded early morning soundscapes through the back window. Lots of birds (different sounds to Australia), traffic (many motor bikes, being South East Asia) and dogs barking. The Tascam and Sony mic fitted nicely in the window. The view out the window was not spectacular, but the sounds were nice and will remind me of Penang.

Early Morning Birds:

Malaysian Early Morning Birds

Dogs Barking:

Malaysia Dogs Barking

 It's nice having these living memories of Malaysia. Sounds are evocative in a very different way to photographs.

 

Sound Recording 1 - Solving a Mystery

It's time I experimented with loading some sound files instead of photographs.

I will decrease the quality a bit so they are not huge uploads, but this might mean turning the sound up to hear the files.

First attempt - solving the great mystery of the Cotter River moving recorder.

Background: in September Thygo (aka Bastard) and I went to the Cotter river to take some photos. I left a small sound recorder near the river to record 20 minutes or so of nice bubbling brook sound. Just a small pocket recorder (Tascam DR-05) not some of my better equipment. I left the recorder on a log facing the river. When we returned, the recorder had been moved and was facing the opposite direction.

It wasn't our imagination - the photos confirmed it.

So who or what moved the recorder? No humans were about, but a person who may have picked it up out of interest would probably put it back in the same position facing the river. There was an emu nearby, but the scrub to get to the log was fairly thick and probably not an emu. That left a small animal or a bird.

The whole incident was recorded so I checked the sound file. I put the file into WavePad sound editing software to see if the sound pattern gave any clues. It did - a big noisy spike 5 minutes into the recording. This indicated a loud noise very close to the recorder's microphones or the recorder itself being knocked. 

The incident lasted about 1 minute. Here is a WavePad close up of the sound pattern for the incident.

OK now for the recording. Click on the link below to hear an MP3 of the incident. Please wait about 15 seconds for the MP3 player to open up and the recording to start. You hear bubbling brook ... then the recorder being knocked around a few times ... then the culprit revealing itself ... and quite proud of the handiwork as well.

Cotter Creek Recorder Moved

This seemed to work. I'll upload some other sound files in the future.

Who recognizes the species?

Good news is that the recorder was not knocked into the river.

Checking through my photographs later I found this one with a blurred moving object. Interesting.

 

Steering Wheel Shake - the Movie

First multi-media post (2nd attempt cos I pushed the wrong button and lost my opus magnus and had to start again)

And I can't work out how to embed a video but hopefully the files are uploaded and you can download them.

so I know you guys think the shake in my White Camry's steering wheel is just in my head.

But swapping between cars, I am convinced it is real, and it leaves my fingers tingling.

Googling has given some possible causes but also indicated that such phenomena are not paranormal.

There is a field of academic study for it (see below)

From googling, my hypothesis is engine mount(s). I also found a neat way to provide a visualisation of the vibration - with the help of a bottle of water.

So this afternoon I did the experiment. Red Camry = control, White Camry = experiment.

 

 

A Frequency Weighting for the Evaluation of Steering Wheel Rotational Vibration J. Giacomin F et al https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/1440891.pdf 

Frequency dependence of perceived intensity of steering wheel vibration: effect of grip force https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4145150

Driver estimation of steering wheel vibration intensity: questionnaire-based survey http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.426.2931&rep=rep1&type=pdf 

Getting Serious Now

The MixPre-6 is the camera.

The Rode NT4 is the lens.

The Audio-Technica ATH-M50X head phones are the viewfinder.

Waiting for the sun to set behind the curtain, to record the backyard sounds. I anticipate lots of insects, some birds, overhead aircraft, and background traffic.