How do you mic a cat? (absolutely serious)
February 2, 2018 6:51 AM Subscribe
SL r/audioengineering; unquestionably the Best of the Web.
"No, you definitely read that correctly. A cat. The kind that goes 'meow.'
We have a cat who makes the most unique vocalizations I’ve ever heard, and I want to preserve them for posterity. Trouble is, a lot of these are sounds she makes when she runs.
What kind of wireless setup could I use to record her that a) wouldn’t be to heavy for a cat, and b) would capture her vocalizations even while she’s running.
I’ve done my own music recording for years, and I never thought I’d ask this question—like ever. But I figure if you guys don’t know, nobody does."
"No, you definitely read that correctly. A cat. The kind that goes 'meow.'
We have a cat who makes the most unique vocalizations I’ve ever heard, and I want to preserve them for posterity. Trouble is, a lot of these are sounds she makes when she runs.
What kind of wireless setup could I use to record her that a) wouldn’t be to heavy for a cat, and b) would capture her vocalizations even while she’s running.
I’ve done my own music recording for years, and I never thought I’d ask this question—like ever. But I figure if you guys don’t know, nobody does."
I have no idea how people get these mics wedged in their cats, or why.
posted by loquacious at 7:29 AM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by loquacious at 7:29 AM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]
Ha, I'm subscribed to that sub and saw this yesterday. It's interesting because it's a really simple question with a relatively simple answer (handheld shotgun mic is probably the best bet), but sounds ridiculous. And also points out how studio people (hi) can tell you sixteen different ways to mic a drum kit, but don't know how to do location sound at all.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:30 AM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by uncleozzy at 7:30 AM on February 2, 2018 [10 favorites]
Ask the CIA - they did it a half century ago.
(Acoustic Kitty will never stop being hilarious.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:44 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]
(Acoustic Kitty will never stop being hilarious.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:44 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]
I did this once. I too had a cat with a unique "meow" and wanted to record it for posterity.
It's definitely harder than it sounds. It took a lot of patience and perseverance, but I managed to get one, solitary meow.
It was enough to make this song, however.
posted by mikeand1 at 7:48 AM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]
It's definitely harder than it sounds. It took a lot of patience and perseverance, but I managed to get one, solitary meow.
It was enough to make this song, however.
posted by mikeand1 at 7:48 AM on February 2, 2018 [5 favorites]
Use calicoaxial cable. Almost entirely very serious.
posted by Celsius1414 at 7:53 AM on February 2, 2018 [14 favorites]
posted by Celsius1414 at 7:53 AM on February 2, 2018 [14 favorites]
sixteen different ways to mic a drum kitJust from reading the discussion there, the ways to mic a drum kit are...
- lav
- boom shotgun
- parabolic
- omni-omnis
- $20M CIA cat
- ... ?
posted by rlk at 7:54 AM on February 2, 2018 [40 favorites]
try very hard to mic something else carefully and with no cat noises whatsoever
You can hear my cats' collars jingling in in this track every eight bars or so. I left it because fuck it.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:58 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
You can hear my cats' collars jingling in in this track every eight bars or so. I left it because fuck it.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:58 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
Surely there are enough cats with distinctive meows and adoring, affluent owners worldwide for some manufacturer of GPS cat-tracking collars to put a mobile-phone-grade microphone array and DSP chip in the next generation?
posted by acb at 8:03 AM on February 2, 2018
posted by acb at 8:03 AM on February 2, 2018
Where can I find a map of the cat?
posted by thandal at 8:03 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by thandal at 8:03 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
There was a wonderful Web 1.0 page years ago where someone engineered a small digital camera to take photos every few minutes, and then hung it around his cat's neck. His cat would disappear for many hours/days and then come back with these magnificently creepy, low-lit 0.3MP photos of woods and abandoned houses and encounters with other creatures.
This was all in the days before GoPros and such. Somehow the memory of that webpage is still more exciting than any of the high-resolution youtube equivalents I'm sure I could watch right now.
posted by distorte at 8:08 AM on February 2, 2018 [20 favorites]
This was all in the days before GoPros and such. Somehow the memory of that webpage is still more exciting than any of the high-resolution youtube equivalents I'm sure I could watch right now.
posted by distorte at 8:08 AM on February 2, 2018 [20 favorites]
This was all in the days before GoPros and such. Somehow the memory of that webpage is still more exciting than any of the high-resolution youtube equivalents I'm sure I could watch right now.
Everything was new and it took some work to duct-tape the pieces together. I can't list all the goofy shit I threw together back in the very-late-stage analog/very early digital days. I remember my entry into digital cameras was when sony put a 3-1/2 floppy drive in their Mavica, and you could JUST SWAP DISKS for more storage, and downloading to computers.
Now, it's push virtual buttons on my pocket phone, and share it with...
posted by mikelieman at 8:26 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
Everything was new and it took some work to duct-tape the pieces together. I can't list all the goofy shit I threw together back in the very-late-stage analog/very early digital days. I remember my entry into digital cameras was when sony put a 3-1/2 floppy drive in their Mavica, and you could JUST SWAP DISKS for more storage, and downloading to computers.
Now, it's push virtual buttons on my pocket phone, and share it with...
posted by mikelieman at 8:26 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
The author provided a link to pictures of his cat with the unique vocalizations.
posted by eye of newt at 8:44 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by eye of newt at 8:44 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]
Everything was new and it took some work to duct-tape the pieces together. ... Now, it's push virtual buttons on my pocket phone, and share it with...
I was just thinking intently about this the other day, how weird things used to be.
I'm also subbed and sometimes answer questions in /r/audioengineering. And I also have duct-taped new weird tech together.
As such I also think the question is perfectly normal and I never would have thought about posting it here. (Not that it's not best of the web nor am I complaining - just pointing out it's totally normal.)
And I think recording a cat is one of the first things that a lot of new field recordists do. I can't even count how many times I've heard someone say or post "Woah, cool, I can hear my cat purring across the room with this field recorder/shotgun mic/parabolic mic."
Heck, I spent the weekend with my friend and family and he spent a lazy Sunday recording a bunch of random stuff around the house with his DIY contact, hydrophone and induction mics. Stuff like putting out bits of material or foil in the rain with the contact mics, or picking up sounds from household appliances and kids toys with the induction mic.
On the duct taping stuff together side of things I remember when I had my first multimedia capable laptop, a huge brick of a Toshiba, back when laptops were much more cubic than flat. So, about the year 2000. *echoes*
Not only did I haul that thing around to play MP3s and hit up then-new wifi all over the place, I was trying to do really silly thing like be able to talk to my computer, just to do something as pointless as select or change tracks in vocal commands. So I didn't have to take my whole laptop out of its bag.
So instead I had rigged up this ugly set of headphones with the boom mic from some piece of crap desktop or phone headset so I could use my better music headphones with it's oversized pair of wires and zip ties holding it all together, and this was also before earbuds with mics or gaming headsets were a thing.
Well, voice recognition for mouse commands was barely a thing for Windows, and getting it to do anything in Winamp's GUI involved an arcane litany of verbal commands like "alt, tab, tab, tab, spacebar" simply to press the next song button. Which, when it worked was just pure, unfriendly nerdiness to try to have to say in the middle of a crowded bus wearing a giant backpack with wires coming out of it.
I even had plans to do the whole cyberpunk gargoyle thing with a connectix quickcam on the shoulder of my backpack and all kinds of doofy, nerdy shit involving way too much wires so I could hit up CUSeeMe from weird places. Meanwhile, of course the whole time I wished I could afford a wireless data modem at a measly 64kbs and some ungodly price per month.
And, well, the first time I tried it on the bus I learned that noise cancellation wasn't a thing, that the background noises or the music itself in my headphones often triggered commands, and triggering commands accurately in the field was basically impossible. Not to mention mortifyingly embarrassing.
Fast forward nearly twenty years and everyone is talking to their phones and I basically refuse to do so. Hell, my mom talks to her watch. There are people, rich people - hell, rich, bratty kids - whose jobs entail doing nothing but walking around and talking to their cameras and phones.
And me? I don't pay for data and cell access any more, I turn off my wifi and bluetooth when I go shopping and often even put tape over my cameras. The few times I've talked to my phone I've regretted it.
posted by loquacious at 11:04 AM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]
I was just thinking intently about this the other day, how weird things used to be.
I'm also subbed and sometimes answer questions in /r/audioengineering. And I also have duct-taped new weird tech together.
As such I also think the question is perfectly normal and I never would have thought about posting it here. (Not that it's not best of the web nor am I complaining - just pointing out it's totally normal.)
And I think recording a cat is one of the first things that a lot of new field recordists do. I can't even count how many times I've heard someone say or post "Woah, cool, I can hear my cat purring across the room with this field recorder/shotgun mic/parabolic mic."
Heck, I spent the weekend with my friend and family and he spent a lazy Sunday recording a bunch of random stuff around the house with his DIY contact, hydrophone and induction mics. Stuff like putting out bits of material or foil in the rain with the contact mics, or picking up sounds from household appliances and kids toys with the induction mic.
On the duct taping stuff together side of things I remember when I had my first multimedia capable laptop, a huge brick of a Toshiba, back when laptops were much more cubic than flat. So, about the year 2000. *echoes*
Not only did I haul that thing around to play MP3s and hit up then-new wifi all over the place, I was trying to do really silly thing like be able to talk to my computer, just to do something as pointless as select or change tracks in vocal commands. So I didn't have to take my whole laptop out of its bag.
So instead I had rigged up this ugly set of headphones with the boom mic from some piece of crap desktop or phone headset so I could use my better music headphones with it's oversized pair of wires and zip ties holding it all together, and this was also before earbuds with mics or gaming headsets were a thing.
Well, voice recognition for mouse commands was barely a thing for Windows, and getting it to do anything in Winamp's GUI involved an arcane litany of verbal commands like "alt, tab, tab, tab, spacebar" simply to press the next song button. Which, when it worked was just pure, unfriendly nerdiness to try to have to say in the middle of a crowded bus wearing a giant backpack with wires coming out of it.
I even had plans to do the whole cyberpunk gargoyle thing with a connectix quickcam on the shoulder of my backpack and all kinds of doofy, nerdy shit involving way too much wires so I could hit up CUSeeMe from weird places. Meanwhile, of course the whole time I wished I could afford a wireless data modem at a measly 64kbs and some ungodly price per month.
And, well, the first time I tried it on the bus I learned that noise cancellation wasn't a thing, that the background noises or the music itself in my headphones often triggered commands, and triggering commands accurately in the field was basically impossible. Not to mention mortifyingly embarrassing.
Fast forward nearly twenty years and everyone is talking to their phones and I basically refuse to do so. Hell, my mom talks to her watch. There are people, rich people - hell, rich, bratty kids - whose jobs entail doing nothing but walking around and talking to their cameras and phones.
And me? I don't pay for data and cell access any more, I turn off my wifi and bluetooth when I go shopping and often even put tape over my cameras. The few times I've talked to my phone I've regretted it.
posted by loquacious at 11:04 AM on February 2, 2018 [13 favorites]
loquacious, it's better to burn out than to fade away...
posted by randomkeystrike at 11:51 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by randomkeystrike at 11:51 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]
The interesting thing is there's still people doing silly weird projects, they're just even weirder thanks to improvements in technology.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:21 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:21 PM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]
So, about the year 2000
I was rocking a Toshiba Libretto running Red Hat.
3-4 years earlier, you needed SCSI cards to hook up CD burners to audio workstations. Man, those were some crazy times.
posted by mikelieman at 5:45 PM on February 2, 2018
I was rocking a Toshiba Libretto running Red Hat.
3-4 years earlier, you needed SCSI cards to hook up CD burners to audio workstations. Man, those were some crazy times.
posted by mikelieman at 5:45 PM on February 2, 2018
distorte, are you thinking of Mr. Lee??? I very seriously contemplated getting a GPS tracker for my semi-outdoors urban explorer cat and Mr. Lee was inspirational.
posted by yeahlikethat at 9:21 AM on February 3, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by yeahlikethat at 9:21 AM on February 3, 2018 [2 favorites]
Oh wow, yeahlikethat, I think that might be it! I remember the website as quite different but I dug through the wayback machine and see that he switched from free hosting at some stage. The pictures look very familiar, although I remembered it as longer ago than 2007. Thank you for the link!
So it was really a 1.3MP camera, not quote as low-res as I remembered (unless there were earlier versions).
posted by distorte at 11:45 AM on February 3, 2018
So it was really a 1.3MP camera, not quote as low-res as I remembered (unless there were earlier versions).
posted by distorte at 11:45 AM on February 3, 2018
When I was a kid I had a toy parabolic microphone that was for "spying", but after reading this thread I want a new one. What's a good field recorder and microphone for that sort of stuff? I want to record birds from long distance and be able to manipulate their songs on a DAW.
posted by gucci mane at 6:57 PM on February 4, 2018
posted by gucci mane at 6:57 PM on February 4, 2018
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posted by Fizz at 6:54 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]