Final Motorbike Session

As the snowboard session had gone so well I was now confident that the microphone with the foam padding would cope equally as well with the motorbike. Rather than the motorbike rider wearing the rucksack mounted microphone, the mic would be mounted on the rear of the bike behind the rider. There were several reasons for the choice of mic placement. The first reason was to get the microphone as close to the part of the bike that makes the most noise...in this case the exhaust. Secondly, after discussions with the rider, it was decided that positioning it directly behind would expose it to the least amount of wind noise when the bike was traveling.

The microphone was placed inside a foam 'shoe' which acted as a secondary shock mount between the vibrating rear of the bike and the windshield. The mic and 'shoe' were then attached to the bike using bungee chords. The recorder, mic pre amp and power supply were placed inside the same foam housing that was made for the rucksack. This foam housing was then placed inside a 'tank bag' in front of the rider. (A 'tank bag' is a suitcase that is magnetically attached to the fuel tank of the bike).

Here are some pictures of the set up:



The resultant recordings were very clean and clear. Similar to the snowboard session there is some evidence of wind causing minor problems but these can be filtered out during post-production. The presence of the wind is also a true reflection of what it is like being on a motorbike. These recordings are, after all, supposed to give the viewer a sense of really being on the bike and with all of the rattles from the chain, sounds from the gear selector, wind noise etc this should add to that experience.

Just like in previous sessions monitoring of the audio during the recording was impossible. Levels were checked prior to the journey using headphones and visually. This proved adequate but in a bigger production monitoring of audio prior to the journey would be possible with the use of mobile recording vehicles etc.

Here is a short example of the bike sequence. The audio in the clip is a Mid-Side decode of the B-Format audio.