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High wind situations


DjGo

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Using a Rycote Windjammer over a Rycote fleece windsock over a 50 dernier pantyhose over a zeppelin, low rolloff on mic and in mixer, high wind (strenghth about 7 on the scale of Beaufort) still manages to ruin my tracks. What is the secret of your succes in these high wind situations?

Thanks,

Diego

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I've used a second wind jammer wrapped around the handgrip and held in place by rubber bands and pushed tight up against the opening at the bottom of the top windjammer, along with a windsock underneath the jammer and found this helps.

Also the condition of the windjammer makes quite a difference - nice new long fine hairy ones are significantly better.

I've also put a foam on the mic inside the basket.

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As has been mentioned, Serious roll off, even more than you might think... Better to thin out the mix than loose it... LONG haired Rycote is a must, the short to medium length won't cut it.. Keep the back of the mic into the wind whenever possible, Boom low from below if possible, keep boom pole from playing across the wind as well, not just the mic will make noise but the pole as well...  Physical barriers do work, trucks and anything else you can think of... And lastly, properly prepared Lavs, under a shirt and over an undershirt with the back into the wind if your lucky will work great... Do this IN ADDITION to your boom tricks on ISO tracks just to have... Pick whats working best and use for your mix... Sometimes due to strength or wind direction, picking only one way can and will burn you... Have a few irons in the fire, pick em as you see they are working "right then". And of course, try to stick with what you choose.. The ISO options are better than none...

  Much of the noise is not wind hitting the actual mic, but wind noise hitting the whole zeppelin and pole, burying the mic in layers of foam and socks sometimes defeats the purpose. Let the Long haired furry and zep do it's job and work on reducing the exposure from wind to the mic system...

There does come a point where all you can do is all you can do.... In a classy and confident manner, let them know you are at or beyond that point... But might still pull out a mix....  What can you do?....

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Hand-held wind-blocking flag.

-- Jan

That's good advice, the shot however wouldn't allow this kind of windblocking, and we were shooting in dunes where we couldn't get a lighttruck in to help block the wind.

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I've used my MKH50 in some pretty severe wind.  I am surprised that there aren't more issues with sand if your wind is over 50mph, which I have definitely handled without issue.

I think, like others, your issue might be the wind hitting your rig, and not your layers of protection. Wind noise on the mic is very different than noise around the mic.

Robert

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I've used my MKH50 in some pretty severe wind.  I am surprised that there aren't more issues with sand if your wind is over 50mph, which I have definitely handled without issue.

I think, like others, your issue might be the wind hitting your rig, and not your layers of protection. Wind noise on the mic is very different than noise around the mic.

Robert

I should have been more clear: it's not wind hitting the diaphragm directly, it's just that I don't seem to have had any trouble in the past with wind hitting the rig so hard so, Yes you're right, it's wind hitting the fully coated zep, not wind directly into the mic... it's just very, very annoying, and I didn't have those problems in the past (using my CS3e which is another beast than the CMIT)..

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Rycote may not recommend  using a foam windscreen inside a zep, but they aren't there in the field to hold a flag to shield the mic for me either.  I don't hear much of any diff on voices between using or not using the foamie under the zep, and I've found that having the foamie makes the zep+rat more effective.  Some years ago we used to use both a Rycote "sock"-a thin fabric covering for zeps that was all Rycote had for us in the days before they made long-haired rats, AND the rat, after it started to be sold.  That DEFINITELY makes more audible change to the audio than a foamie-under-a-zep/rat setup, and wasn't any more effective.  In truth, there is a definite upper limit to the wind protection you can expect from a zeppelin rig without customization--fortunately that level of protection is much higher than it used to be.

phil p

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I'm in Wellington New Zealand,enough said. Strong wind is a fact of life.I'm using over my CMIT 5U.....no acoustifoam pop filter. But I am using....a blue carpet stick down material that is sticky on both sides that totally encompasses the rycote.This material is acoustically transparent and over that is a high wind cover. This is a brilliant combination for rain that is constant but not really heavy.Over this in a serious wind and rain situation I'm using a white acrylic material used in the filter systems of an airconditioning duct.It is coarse and rough and sheds its material if used too often...but no wind gets through or rain...and is easily replaceable....all acoustically transparent...it will withstand winds over 50+ mph.A simple shake of the whole unit empties any water and you are ready to go again....Note..no windjammer...it soaks up the rain and you lose high frequencies.

BVS

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I'm in Wellington New Zealand,enough said. Strong wind is a fact of life.I'm using over my CMIT 5U.....no acoustifoam pop filter. But I am using....a blue carpet stick down material that is sticky on both sides that totally encompasses the rycote.This material is acoustically transparent and over that is a high wind cover. This is a brilliant combination for rain that is constant but not really heavy.Over this in a serious wind and rain situation I'm using a white acrylic material used in the filter systems of an airconditioning duct.It is coarse and rough and sheds its material if used too often...but no wind gets through or rain...and is easily replaceable....all acoustically transparent...it will withstand winds over 50+ mph.A simple shake of the whole unit empties any water and you are ready to go again....Note..no windjammer...it soaks up the rain and you lose high frequencies.

BVS

wow, intrigueing.. could you show some pics?

BTW, the cameratape over the windjammer's zipper worked some wonders, not miracles.. but, if not carefully applied, it seriously could give the dead-cat a brazilian wax..

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

The newer drawstring type windjammers work better at keeping wind from entering the bottom of the zeppelin. Secondly, a simple mini bungee that is stretched around the middle of the zeppelin( over the jammer) helps alot. The bungee helps keep closed that small opening in the zeppelin. And i find a foam screen in combination with the zeppelin and jammer does help. I roll off very little.

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  • 9 months later...

A little late to the party - I apologise.

Understanding the theory behind windshields helps quite a bit. I'll try to give you the essence.

Wind is an LF problem. The windnoise spectrum has a tilt on it that defies most people's belief, with massive power in the infrasonic region and very little at all above about 1kHz unless it is an extreme gale. Shaping the LF with a filter - and it ought to be a very steep one like 18dB/oct or more - helps far more than anything else. A good basket windshield on a directional mic is actually an acoustic HPF, and it does that at extreme LF by acting as a pressure vessel - so it mustn't have any leaks. (Joerg Wuttke - ex Schoeps goes into the theory of that very well).

To get rid of windnoise but leave sweet audio you need to have a rig that can distinguish between the high particle velocity movement of wind and the much lower particle velocity of sound waves. That is usually done using a fabric with fine pores that act as an acoustic impedance. They limit the speed with which air can flow backwards and forwards through the material - the slow sound waves are barely affected but the wind is slowed (impeded) massively.

The actual noise of wind is created at the surface of the shield. Putting that as far away from the capsule as possible makes a big difference - something close to a cube law, due to correlation, so that capsule/skin distance is ~very~ important. Thus big windshields always work much better than small ones.

Lastly, the noise is generated by large scale turbulence at the surface, so cutting down the turbulence also cuts down the noise. That's where fur comes in, creating tiny vortices round every hair that kill the much larger scale turbulence by breaking it up and canceling most of it out.

So take all those components and you can construct the sort of windshield you need for very high wind. It has to be large, rigid, not leaky and covered in fur. And you also need to shape that LF bandwidth ~really~ steeply. Don't forget any of those elements.

Adding lots of extra clothing adds acoustic impedance but very quickly starts to affect the medium particle velocity high frequencies of audio, while not doing very much to the resist the wind. It is easy to do but has much less effect on the windnoise than you'd like.

That's a rather brief lesson but I hope it makes some sense, and shows the best way to deal with the problem.

Chris Woolf (with a Rycote hat on)

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This:

http://www.sennheise...dshields_003224

along with your Rycote sock maybe ?

(be sure to have the right size to fit your rycote zeppelin!)

This long haired Senny fur has helped me in some situations; a little better than the Rycote... it's built differently; no satin on the inside. Looks more like rough fabric that "breathes" easier than satin and "grips" the Rycote sock.

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A little late to the party - I apologise.

Understanding the theory behind windshields helps quite a bit. I'll try to give you the essence.

Wind is an LF problem. The windnoise spectrum has a tilt on it that defies most people's belief, with massive power in the infrasonic region and very little at all above about 1kHz unless it is an extreme gale. Shaping the LF with a filter - and it ought to be a very steep one like 18dB/oct or more - helps far more than anything else. A good basket windshield on a directional mic is actually an acoustic HPF, and it does that at extreme LF by acting as a pressure vessel - so it mustn't have any leaks. (Joerg Wuttke - ex Schoeps goes into the theory of that very well).

To get rid of windnoise but leave sweet audio you need to have a rig that can distinguish between the high particle velocity movement of wind and the much lower particle velocity of sound waves. That is usually done using a fabric with fine pores that act as an acoustic impedance. They limit the speed with which air can flow backwards and forwards through the material - the slow sound waves are barely affected but the wind is slowed (impeded) massively.

The actual noise of wind is created at the surface of the shield. Putting that as far away from the capsule as possible makes a big difference - something close to a cube law, due to correlation, so that capsule/skin distance is ~very~ important. Thus big windshields always work much better than small ones.

Lastly, the noise is generated by large scale turbulence at the surface, so cutting down the turbulence also cuts down the noise. That's where fur comes in, creating tiny vortices round every hair that kill the much larger scale turbulence by breaking it up and canceling most of it out.

So take all those components and you can construct the sort of windshield you need for very high wind. It has to be large, rigid, not leaky and covered in fur. And you also need to shape that LF bandwidth ~really~ steeply. Don't forget any of those elements.

Adding lots of extra clothing adds acoustic impedance but very quickly starts to affect the medium particle velocity high frequencies of audio, while not doing very much to the resist the wind. It is easy to do but has much less effect on the windnoise than you'd like.

That's a rather brief lesson but I hope it makes some sense, and shows the best way to deal with the problem.

Chris Woolf (with a Rycote hat on)

Well done.

8)

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I'm in Wellington New Zealand,enough said. Strong wind is a fact of life.I'm using over my CMIT 5U.....no acoustifoam pop filter. But I am using....a blue carpet stick down material that is sticky on both sides that totally encompasses the rycote.This material is acoustically transparent and over that is a high wind cover. This is a brilliant combination for rain that is constant but not really heavy.Over this in a serious wind and rain situation I'm using a white acrylic material used in the filter systems of an airconditioning duct.It is coarse and rough and sheds its material if used too often...but no wind gets through or rain...and is easily replaceable....all acoustically transparent...it will withstand winds over 50+ mph.A simple shake of the whole unit empties any water and you are ready to go again....Note..no windjammer...it soaks up the rain and you lose high frequencies.

BVS

Please, could post a pic or a link?

Thanks in advance! :)

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