Battlefield Recording?

Headphones

How best do I record a large area of bangs, pops and explosions?

I live on a hill overlooking Brizzle (a few miles from the centre).

Every new year a significant portion of the city lets of fireworks at midnight and, living above this, a huge soundscape of noise is the result (sounds like a battlefield to me!).  Since this sounds wonderful I'd like to record it (yes, there's no partying this year!).

So how best to capture it?

What technique/mic setup should I use?

How should I set levels?

Rather hard to rehearse this and a retake would be a year later - so any advice gratefully received.

My gear is not extensive, it comprises a "matched pair" of cheap condensors on a bar (behringer C2 cardiods) and a Peavey SM58 clone.  I have a mixer as the preamp for these and recording would be through a two channel 24 bit sound card (M-Audio Audiphile) into a PC.  I could potentially use my Pod Pro as a third channel if this would benefit (I believe his too is 24 bit ADCs).

Danny1969

I don't have exact experience in recording fireworks but have recorded loads of gigs on C2's  ...... although they have a lot of inbuilt self noise compared to a Rode or similar this is less of a problem at high sound pressure levels so results should be good
I would use an X Y setup ..... basically both mics in the same spot but angles opposite to get the stereo image ... keep gains low so even loudest pop doesn't clip the inputs

I can't see the peavey being useful for this application so I probably wouldn't bother with it 

Funkfingers

A shotgun microphone would best best for directional tracking (and isolating) of moving sound sources.

Condensers tend to try to capture everything - including, possibly, too much of the background grot that you might not want. A PZM might do just as well.

Unless the firework displays are pretty close to your recording location, the dynamic microphone will mainly sense wind noise.

Headphones said:

how best to capture it?

A major part of successfully capturing the sounds of the fireworks will be eliminating interruptions from other, unwanted sources nearby your recording location. i.e. People opening and closing doors. Oohs, aahs and running commentaries on the fireworks as they appear in the sky. Moose the boxer dog barking, "What doing?" 

Headphones

Thanks for your thoughts chaps.

My first thought too was a simple XY arrangement, but I wonder if something like ORTF might offer a more realistic recording in this situation (never tried anything like this size of source before!)?

Surpressing the local sounds wasn't something I'd thought of, I'll not have control over such things directly either.  Any hints as to how to minimse?

  My present intent is to record from a top floor through the window on a boom stand.

ToneControl

you could use a compressor between the mic and the A/D,
or even split the mic input to different A/D channels with differing gain levels (like bracketing exposure when taking photos)

Stuckfast

Unless it's completely windless or you have specialised windshields, any directional mic used outdoors is going to pick up mainly wind. A spaced pair of small-diaphragm omnis would be better, but you'll still need windshields.

Set the gain fairly low to leave yourself plenty of headroom and record at 24-bit. Assuming the fireworks are loud you won't need to worry too much about other noises. Apart from wind.

The other option that might be interesting is binaural recording, either using miniature mics in your own ears or using a dummy head. That would give an outstanding sense of realism over headphones.

Might be worth visiting freesound.org and having a listen to the different recordings of fireworks people have posted there. They often list the setup used.