Getting Motorcycle Sounds (Haro Racing) - Part 1/2
The pit crew checking for safe release.
When Joanna and Hilmy reached out for a game about motorbikes, I can’t bear not to let this opportunity pass. I immediately say yes. We will be recording modified kapcais (CC150).
The models that I had to record are: Yamaha Y15zr & Honda RS150r
The lead up to it, I did my research.
There were three problems that I had to solve before recording day.
1. Rider safety has to be guaranteed.
2. Motorcycles are loud
3. It has to be small profile.
I knew rider safety could be solved if I made the rig as small a profile so I started out with that. Usually in a controlled recording day for vehicles, you would be able to strap on (small) blimps with microphones in it to protect it from wind while sounding “open”. And from the looks of it with references to Watson Wu’s tutorial on recording and editing motorbikes for games, you would need to have the time to set up multiple microphones to record different perspectives (exhaust + engines).
The Sound of Speed 2: Recording Motorcycles
Watson Wu’s recording tutorial was one the ones that I’ve referred to get rigging ideas from. I highly encourage you check out his work as he’s recorded loads of vehicles for film and games.
Rode was another one that I referred to, mostly to check out how cars were miked up for a practice run session. Rode racing had a writeup on how they used different levels of budget to mike up their cars.
And the last one was through DPA’s writeup on how they’ve deliver F1 current hybrid-era’s sound.
Armed with those knowledge, we went back to see what’s our situation.
We do not have the luxury as we were taking advantage of a practice session. Therefore, the rig needs to be small as to not obstruct rider ergonomics and light (so that it doesn’t add too much additional weight to it).
Initially I wanted to do this in a dyno setting and then have one setting where the rider can move up the engine rev from 0-red. This would allow us to timestamp recording to rev values, making it easy to implement in a game. And again, this was a practice session so we took it more as a research day to figure out how does a motorcycle perform under racing conditions.
So, light and small. Basically all microphones that I could think of that requires a blimp would be out of the picture - leaving only miniature microphones as an option. Which is great as at that point in time, I needed to procure lavalier microphones for my location sound gigs. Not only that, they were great to mic up as they were tiny + adding wind protection would still provide a much lower profile than a microphone blimp setup. Then that leaves me to the issue of whether can the microphone handle the SPL levels of a motorcycle.
As a budding field recordist, I had a pair of Lom Mikro Uzis with me (rated at ~115 dB SPL) so I did a test run at Joanna and Hilmy’s office and had a regular passenger motorbike miked up into a Zoom F6.
I left it at 32bit recording as I envisioned that I want to set and forget it as I only had one chance to mount it and there will be no touching the gain staging (on the actual day I reverted back to the H5 anyways, will expand later). I recorded and reviewed it.
It literally clipped my microphone! I forgotten that the closer you get to a source, it exponentially gets louder. And due to the small area that I could mount a microphone, it was impossible to find another spot to mic. Ok then I went back to the drawing board.
Recorded at 96kHz/32bit. Gain set by Zoom F6.
So, what now?
I am left with two options.
1. A dynamic lavelier.
2. Dump money and get the DPAs.
Essentially, It was more a cost factor and an availability factor. Based in Malaysia, it really is quite hard to get your hands on rental gear as there are literally none in the area. If it was in the US, I could easily walk into Location Sound Corp and rent a bunch of letrosonincs PDR and dpa microphones and be done with. Here, nothing other than prosumer brands from sennheiser/shure/rode.
**Why rent instead of buying? Because you can test it out if it works with your rig. It also could be a one-off use case and in that case, you’ve burnt your money - or in other words if budget didn’t allow it you’re buying into the novelty.
Option 1 ❌ - it’s not too farfetched. I needed something low cost and could handle their SPL levels. And,yes! Shure makes the SM11 which retails at 144usd.
Since it really isn’t in demand, the electronic stores at Jalan Pudu don’t hold them at all. They can order it but it’ll take weeks and I only have a few days. Frequency response isn’t that great and even with the spl levels driving the levels, the frequency response over the range of spl pressure is a gradient, so you wouldn’t get a true sound.
Option 2 ✅ - DPAs.
DPAs were the forefront of all the vigorous use-case scenarios. Formula 1 ✅, theatrical musicals (Les Miserables) - ✅, sending it to mars to get martian audio - ✅. On top of that, their microphones have been used in musical applications (so you know that there is a transparent yet musical quality to it) What more could you ask?
*now you might say that hey duncan, why don’t you just follow the motorcycle vlog guys and just get a H4N/H5 zoom recorder with the built in microphones and put it in their boot? - yes you can but you’re essentially muffling the audio by putting it there. In addition to that, I don’t think I even had the trunk space for that so that’s out of the picture*
Their most DPA4062 could accept ~139dB on their CORE modules! That’s really close to what a jet engine sounds. Of course that comes with a tradeoff for quieter sounds. Their 4060s are widely used in film applications though some might find them a little too hot which I agree to a certain extent. In addition to that, I’ve already have a cheaper equivalent - the mikro uzis! So I’m pretty much looking at the DPA4061s. A sweet spot where it still has use cases where it’s been used by Simon Hayes for Les Miserables where he had to capture the dynamic performances of theatre musicals.
So I got one! Just one only. They are expensive and with my pay grade in Malaysia, I needed to do at-least 1 month’s worth of work before able to breakeven on the investment. However, it is probably my best investment.
(Part 1 ends here — Part 2 coming up.)
