On to the torture test: the local shooting range. I’ve found that this is the absolute worst acoustic environment I’ve ever run across. The average gunshot is ~155db at ten feet. You’ve got a situation where the ambient sound level goes from 10db to 155db and back in less than a second, and since you’re in a concrete building, there are echoes and splashes everywhere.
I set up with an AT9841 single-point and started recording. The automatic level control obviously struggled with the dynamic changes, but still did much better than expected. I made a second recording by attenutating to a specific source and lowering the level manually.
One thing Sony finally fixed was the ability to adjust recording-levels on the fly, something only the Sharps could do previously. I can’t really think of any features they’ve omitted on this unit.
Both recordings surprised me. The first seemed to fluctuate a bit, meaning the reports were a bit garbled and intervening sounds like feet shuffling and people talking were muffled, but the soundstage was well-preserved, and everything was right where it was supposed to be. Continued...