A few months ago, I'd borrowed my buddy Ron's Marantz CDR-630
professional audio CD-R burner to burn some audio CD's. One day, I
heard my bunny eating her fresh crispy greens...and and the idea came
to me.
"Why? Because no one else has done it, by God!"
I went to the basement, brought up my little Mackie 1202 mixing
console, along with 2 XLR microphone cables to reach from the kitchen
to the entertainment center, and a Peavey PVM-45
dynamic microphone. I dangled the mic from the top of Jordan's cage
down inside. From 50
minutes or more of chewing recordings, I ran a few tracks from the
resulting audio CD through Adaptec Easy CD Creator (ugh) to extract the
tracks to WAV format, and then through WinAmp to get it to 128kbps MP3
format.
Here are some results in MP3 format. I plan to edit these later to
normalize/increase the volume, but you'll get the idea. The ticking
you hear is our kitchen clock--which should give you an idea of the
amount of gain required to get this recording. You can also hear the
bell of the Metra commuter rail traffic in some of the selections. The
extremely high gain involved and the quietness of the tracks with
respect to noise are an amazing testament to the design of the Mackie
1202 mixer. If there's a noise floor on this mixer, I haven't found
it--man is it quiet.
MP3 playing software like Apple's QuickTime
(free..and you may already have it) or WinAmp (free version available) or
semi-recent versions of Microsoft Windows
Media Player (comes with Internet Exploder, I think) can play
these MP3 audio files. If you run unix or another non-mainstream OS
(good for you!), you'll have to hunt yourself, but I know several are
available. If you have a recommendation for a Linux or FreeBSD MP3
player, please email me at the address below.
- Jordan eats hay, then scratches her
ear (227kB, 0:14) The smallest file here...but not the best.
- Jordan eats Kale (2.3MB, 2:23) This, the
crunchiest of her greens, makes for clear listening, especially
towards the end when she has the leaf right under the mic.
- Jordan eats banana (904kB, 0:56) You'll
really have to crank this up, as bananas aren't all that crunchy.
It's almost as fun to watch as it is to hear, though. You can hear the train
come by at the end.
- Jordan eats hay,
scratches, nudges the mic, and jumps into the litterbox (1.14MB, 1:11)
- The Microphone Fight
(1.07MB, 1:07)
Here, Jordan eats lettuce, then
curiousity causes her to chin the hanging, heavy microphone suspended
from above her cage. This puts the microphone in motion like a
pendulum. It swings back and hits her, scaring her pellet-less
jumping away. I
laugh hysterically and make fun of her. She ends the track by
flopping on her side in her litter box, causing more laughter from the human.
- Jordan eats Hay (3.2MB, 3:25) Sadly, I
don't position the mic until 1:20 into this track. You get to hear me
close the window though.
Undoubtedly, I had too much time on my hands that day...but then here
you are listening to these!!
Like em? Prefer a different format? Tell me how to convert to real
audio for free, and I'll do it. Send comments to jordan@toddh.net.
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