Microphones and Soundcards

All choices of soundcard will require a microphone (except the Blue/Snowflake which has an integrated mic), and present a standard 3.5mm female microphone socket.

Basics

The recommended microphone is the Primo EM172 (datasheet) Primo website. Primo make a “capsule” which has no connectors and needs soldered, but people like this sell them (in the UK) with cables, and nicely packaged (‘Clippy’) with windshelds.

Connecting the microphone

On the CLAC, the microphone is connected to the pink “line-in” socket. On other soundcards the socket is labelled (don’t confuse it with the headphone socket). Make sure the plug is firmly attached. Ensure the metal contacts on the microphone plug are clean.

Stereo or mono

If your sound card supports it (for example using the CLAC), you might prefer to use a pair of stereo microphones. You will need to tell the Solo whether it should record in stereo or mono. Stereo recordings occupy twice as much space on the memory card, so halve the available duration.

The relevant Solo Confirugation option is “SOLO_CHANNELS” - see more configuration page.

Configuring volume levels, and mono/stereo

Each type of microphone/soundcard will require different volume (gain) levels to be set inside the Solo Configuration file. You should try out a few values until you get it right - bearing in mind that the audio you are interested in analysing may be distant - and therefore quiet, so err on the side of higher gains. Shouting into the microphone at close-range is not a good way to establish gain settings

  • try it out in the conditions you will actually be recording in. See configuration page for more.

Hydrophones

People are successfully using the Solo with this hydrophone and the SB3 sound card.