Mic for low vibration/bass-y noise

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Dyingfromnoise

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Hi

First time poster, nice to meet you and sorry it’s not 100% music focused but I hope some experts here can help

There’s a vibration type bass-y noise happening in my house (detached/concrete)

I’m trying to record it for the management company to hear it, it happens late at night so they can’t come to the house

I have been using a zoom h2 which isn’t picking up much of the noise and my sound engineer friend said if you can hear the noise then the zoom would pick it up so I am a little put off now

Would you agree with this and could anyone recommend a different mic? I have an Apollo x8 soundcard to plug it into.

Has anyone had a similar experience with this type of noise? It can get incredibly loud but if I can’t capture it I’m pretty stuck for evidence.

Thank you for your time
 
If it's structure born, then find a suitable surface and hard mount the zoom with a weight so the opposite of normal isolation happens, the sound can physically travel to the recorder. Try to get the capsule touching the floor or wall might improve it.
 
I’m sure it is, we checked the plumbing and electricity and they are good but there is a neighbour next to me which may have something in their basement. I spoke to them and they said no. Regardless I need to record it and will happily try your method. Thank you for your input
 
Unfortunately that didn’t work Rob

Any other suggestions welcome

What are people’s thoughts on maybe making a makeshift cone around the mic to try and “grab” the sound?
 
Is it more prevalent in certain areas of the room? Depending on tbe frequency, you might be hitting a mode that makes it sound much louder. Try moving the Zoom round to corners vs in the center. Also, can you boost the bass frequency in a DAW? You can try doing a low shelf and boosting from 100 cycles up. If you are recording late at night, overall noise should be low, so if you see the meters bouncing then you could try to quantify the low frequency noise.

I can't find any specs on the microphones to the H2. It may be that it doesn't have the low frequency response to hear the noise.
 
How about a guitar piezo pickup? Or a double bass dot pickup?
 
TalismanRich said:
Is it more prevalent in certain areas of the room? Depending on tbe frequency, you might be hitting a mode that makes it sound much louder. Try moving the Zoom round to corners vs in the center. Also, can you boost the bass frequency in a DAW? You can try doing a low shelf and boosting from 100 cycles up. If you are recording late at night, overall noise should be low, so if you see the meters bouncing then you could try to quantify the low frequency noise.

I can't find any specs on the microphones to the H2. It may be that it doesn't have the low frequency response to hear the noise.
Click to expand...

It’s hard to pinpoint as the house is concrete and open plan unfortunately, I will try your other suggestions though. Thank you
 
PZMs I'd expect to perform poorly here because their method of operation makes them very sensitive in a hemispherical pattern over the floor. Some are annoying (for normal use) probe to footfall noise from the surface they're on, but if your experiments so far have failed to pick up the structure born noise, I doubt they'd work that well. The piezo-electrics get virtually all their energy from the thing they're attached to - so fine for concrete - if the concrete is the carrier.

I've never tried, but the garage I have my van serviced at have a strange microphone on a long metal 'wand' - they use it to listen to internal noises in the engine - maybe one of these might work if you know anyone who has such a gizmo.
 
rob aylestone said:
PZMs I'd expect to perform poorly here because their method of operation makes them very sensitive in a hemispherical pattern over the floor. Some are annoying (for normal use) probe to footfall noise from the surface they're on, but if your experiments so far have failed to pick up the structure born noise, I doubt they'd work that well. The piezo-electrics get virtually all their energy from the thing they're attached to - so fine for concrete - if the concrete is the carrier.

I've never tried, but the garage I have my van serviced at have a strange microphone on a long metal 'wand' - they use it to listen to internal noises in the engine - maybe one of these might work if you know anyone who has such a gizmo.
Click to expand...


Sounds interesting, will do a google to check those out
 
Dear all

I bought a shure sm58 and plugged it straight into the sound card. With a low pass filter I can now easily get the vibration noise thankfully

Really appreciate everyone’s input
 
Interesting. Reading 'low vibration I presumed sub' frequencies. Just curious as the 58 rolls off pretty good down there. But then also bassy noise so..?
Glad you got it captured. :>)
 
Dyingfromnoise said:
Dear all

I bought a shure sm58 and plugged it straight into the sound card. With a low pass filter I can now easily get the vibration noise thankfully

Really appreciate everyone’s input
Click to expand...

Can you post a 20 second clip? For me the best vehicle is a 320k MP3 attachment then I can stuff it straight into Samplitude and turn it into a .wav that Right Mark Analyser can process. I can then give you a spectrum of the noise.

Dave.
 
Hi Dave

Happy to send a sample and appreciate the help.

I’m recording straight into ableton 10 and can export as a wav, would that do or will I do mp3 for you?



QUOTE=ecc83;4533244]Can you post a 20 second clip? For me the best vehicle is a 320k MP3 attachment then I can stuff it straight into Samplitude and turn it into a .wav that Right Mark Analyser can process. I can then give you a spectrum of the noise.

Dave.[/QUOTE]
 
Dyingfromnoise said:
Hi Dave

Happy to send a sample and appreciate the help.

I’m recording straight into ableton 10 and can export as a wav, would that do or will I do mp3 for you?



QUOTE=ecc83;4533244]Can you post a 20 second clip? For me the best vehicle is a 320k MP3 attachment then I can stuff it straight into Samplitude and turn it into a .wav that Right Mark Analyser can process. I can then give you a spectrum of the noise.

Dave.
Click to expand...
[/QUOTE]

Sadly you cannot attach .wavs in HR so either convert to MP3 320k or post on a site I can download from.

BTW have you considered using a small hi fi speaker as a microphone? This is often done to get a hefty 'thud' from a kick drum although they usually use a naked speaker.

Dave.
 
Hi Dave

Link for recording is below, first half is when the vibration is on, small gap and second half is same mic placement when the vibration is off. It’s the raw recording. I have been trying to get a clogs comparison of the 2 using low pass filter but not great results. The vibration recording is only about 70% intensity of what it usually is so I can get better recording but if you can do something with this it would be appreciated. Basically I need something solid to give to the house management company

WeTransfer
 
I gave the file a listen, and quite frankly, I can't tell any difference in the noise between the first half and second half. I boosted the signal about 80dB and then tried to use a sharp narrow band EQ to sweep from 50 to 200Hz. Nothing showed up for me in that. I also tried a low pass at 100 and 150Hz and again came up blank. Meter readings were the same for the first and second half.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Perhaps Dave can see something.
 
TalismanRich said:
I gave the file a listen, and quite frankly, I can't tell any difference in the noise between the first half and second half. I boosted the signal about 80dB and then tried to use a sharp narrow band EQ to sweep from 50 to 200Hz. Nothing showed up for me in that. I also tried a low pass at 100 and 150Hz and again came up blank. Meter readings were the same for the first and second half.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Perhaps Dave can see something.
Click to expand...

Ok, let me get a better vibration one. The vibration part was randomly extracted from a long recording so mightn’t be great
 
Last edited:
Dyingfromnoise said:
Ok, let me get a better vibration one. The vibration part was randomly extracted from a long recording so mightn’t be great
Click to expand...

Sorry chap, I'm same as Rich, cannot hear* jack. Well no periodic LF noise anyway.

I normalized the clip to -3dB fs but still just got white noise. The screen shots are of an instantaneous 'grab' of Samplitude's spectroscope and a spectrum from Right Mark of the whole thing. Again, pure white noise.

*Now, yes I AM clinically deaf in both lugs. 30dB down on normal at 2kHz and off a cliff thereafter...BUT I can hear sub 200Hz as well as normal people!

Dave. (BTW. How did you use WeTransfer? I thought you could only send FROM email TO email addresses?)

Dave.
 

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Quick question first, is there any rules to low filter isolation. I might be doing it wrong.

Let me get one more with and without vibration sample from better spot for a last chance please. The bass/vibration is constant, like a machine or something

What about spectrum analyzing?

If you email the stuff to yourself you just copy the wetransfer link in the email
 
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