Thanks to each of you who took time to send us your personal story. We have received over 700 stories and have read each of them. Many of them were great, yet we only have eight prizes to give out. Below you will see the grand prize winning story and the seven other winners as well.
Thanks to each of you who took time to send us your personal story. We have received over 700 stories and have read each of them. Many of them were great, yet we only have eight prizes to give out. Below you will see the grand prize winning story and the seven other winners as well.
The sound of wind
Saving a Gibson
Attack of the giant ants
Making movie magic
The abuse of DPA mics
Growing a personal sound library
Preserving the Flamenco sound
A DPA holiday poem
The sound of wind by Philip Samartzis
I am the current Australian Antarctic Division Arts Fellow and I travelled to Casey Station in Eastern Antarctica earlier this year to record the sound of Katabatic wind. I used two d:dicate 4006 Omnidirectional Microphones to record numerous environments and weather events, including two blizzards. One of the blizzards measured 100 knots and is the strongest blizzard ever to be recorded at Casey Station during summer. The recordings are amazing!
Listen to the sound of Katabatic wind recorded with DPA microphones.
Saving a Gibson
by Kien Phan Huy
I ve been through all kinds of pickups, preamps and EQs but I have never been satisfied. Once, a well-known pickup company released a new "internal microphone". After hours of watching YouTube videos, I was convinced that this new product would end my quest for amplification. So when I bought my Gibson True Vintage acoustic guitar, I went to the local shop and asked for an installation. The man refused. He said he would not drill any hole in such a nice guitar. He pinched his nose and said with a Donald Duck voice: "It will sound like this". He handed me a drill bit and said: "if you really want to drill that hole, help yourself".
I chickened out. At the same shop they sold the d:vote 4099 Instrument Microphone so I thought I d give it a try and compare the sound of this new internal mic with the d:vote . The shop assistant handed me another guitar with the new internal mic already installed.
I plugged the guitar into a high-end acoustic guitar amp and strummed a chord. It sounded very good: no piezo "quack", great dynamic, no bad piezo compression. I laughed nervously; very confident in the fact it was the best pickup I had ever tried. Then I tried the d:vote 4099G on the very same guitar.
Suddenly the shop became silent. Everybody stopped to listen and nobody could believe their ears. It sounded REAL.
All other pickups make a compromise. The d:vote makes no compromise, it s the real thing.
Attack of the giant ants
by Stijn Demeulenaere
It's 3:30 am, I wake after, yeah well, way too little sleep. I stumble around for light, get dressed hurriedly. Disconnect my recorder from the charger. Gather the gear: mikes check, backpack check, headlight check, and head out. The others are waiting for me so I find a place in the jeep. I'm sleepy yet excited. It's pitch black out there. It's 4 am. We start driving. I turn on my headlamp; see the heads of the driver and my fellow recordists bobbing up and down as the Land Rover drives over uneven terrain. I turn on my recorder, a last check, again. Battery 8.1V, CF empty. OK, that's fine. I check my mics. Two d:screet 4060 Miniature Omnidirectional Microphones a stereo kit. They're mounted on a coat hanger 47cm apart, AB. A small and simple setup that I have really grown to love over the past days. Nice stereo image, great definition. Versatile too.
When I'm not using the mics in a stereo setup, the small lavalier allows me to put a microphone into small holes and cracks I find. It survived an attack from some really big ants a couple of days ago. And being a lavalier, it doesn't suffer from the humidity after the occasional torrential downpour. I use them mostly on a coat hanger, which I hang in a tree. Quick and simple. Not today though. There aren't really any trees where we will be recording today, so I mounted my coat hanger on a tripod.
The Land Rover continues, taking a deep plunge, down to the river. A while later we arrive. Everybody turns on their headlights and jumps out of the jeep. In a steady pass we walk up to The Bridge. This is our recording spot this morning: a bridge over the Limpopo River in South Africa. We walk decisively. We've got 16 minutes. Then we need to be set up. I take a spot in the middle of the bridge. Listen, adjust my tripod a bit and trim the gain. Great! I press record.
I go back, leaving the recorder. The other recordists do the same. We head back in silence to the Land Rovers. Not a word is said. Some of us lie down and start taking a nap, careful not to snore. Others can't sleep, grab a second recorder and head out, away from the bridge, playing around with VLF or contact mikes. I'm putting a piezo in a termite mound, and go back to the others. I listen. There's a seam of light at the horizon. Daybreak has started.
The bridge is an ideal recording place birds on both sides of the river, the insect choir that starts and shifts and changes slowly. At one point a group of baboons are making a terrible racket. We think they're fighting. Later, our guides tell us they were pursuing a mate. We recorded from 4:43 to 7:16 am. This was done during the Sonic Mmabolela residency by Francisco L pez. This dawn chorus recording turned out to be my favorite recording of those two weeks. The DPA microphones have great detail, creating a most natural sound. You hear the Veldt waking up. The insect choir picking up a notch, and after half an hour shifting down a couple of Hz. Then the birds join in. Slowly waking u
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Thanks to each of you who took time to send us your personal story. We have received over 700 stories and have read each of them. Many of them were great, yet we only have eight prizes to give out. Below you will see the grand prize winning story and the seven other winners as well.
