This is a quick test using my new windscreen I crafted for my Logitech headset that plugs into a Sony recorder that I use for dictation purposes with Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Preferred.
I’m walking outside and hoping to catch a nice gentle breeze blowing in my face that would normally make my microphone go off the charts with static and noise that would render the dictation of my words somewhat useless. I have crafted this windscreen using a little foam that I cut from a mattress pad, along with the paw of a cat that I cut from a stuffed animal that was at the bottom of my kids toy bin that we had in storage. Hopefully they won’t miss the cat as they haven’t played with it in over two years, I do seem to recall that it may have been one of my daughters preferred toys when she was two years old, but she hasn’t seen it in a long, long time.
I’m outside walking on our dock. It is a nice beautiful day here in North Carolina although it’s a little bit chilly. I’m turning around in circles slowly trying to capture whatever breeze or wind might be blowing around and I can feel a little bit of breeze on my face right now.
Even though I can feel the breeze blowing in my face I cannot hear the breeze blowing into the microphone of my headset. That is a distinct improvement over results I was receiving just a few minutes ago before I put this windscreen onto my headset.
If you want to build a wind screen yourself (see this past post or keep reading for the basic idea) for your own microphone(s) even if they are noise cancellation microphones like my microphone is, All you need to do is get a microphone, and a piece of foam, and a stuffed animal such as a beanie baby. The thicker the fur, or the fuzzier the for the better. Think of those shaggy microphone covers that you see on microphones used by reporters during hurricanes. That is ultimately the goal that you’re searching for here for use outdoors. I molded the foam using a pair of scissors to get a general shape that I was looking for. It wasn’t pretty(didn’t come with a bow nor outfitted in promotional bags like you find at trade shows, but it did work!), but it seemed to be functional. I then cut off the leg of a beanie baby kitten, this was a large beanie baby not the typical variety. I then pulled that leg over top of the foam which I had inserted onto the actual microphone. I then proceeded to trim off the excess part of the leg of the kitten, until I just barely had the foam covered with a kitten paw.
For the record, I’ve never hurt a kitten in my life, and this is a stuffed kitten, a stuffed animal that is, and the kitten didn’t seem to complain even though I did feel a little bit like Sweeney Todd as I performed the surgery.
Once I had the paw fitted to the microphone foam, I then used a ponytail holder, to tighten the paw fur around the foam so that it would stay on the microphone and would not fall off.
That’s basically how I built this, and it does seem to be working. The wind is picking up right now, and I can hear it in my ears but I cannot hear it in the actual headphones. The wind is blowing a pretty good clip , leaves are falling off the trees and actually hitting me in the face at the moment but I do not hear any of this background noise coming through my microphone. I’ve been talking for about five minutes and 25 seconds.
For what it’s worth, the above totals up to about 606 words that I wrote in 5 1/2 minutes. That is about 110 words per minute that I was able to type while I was walking around on a fishing dock in North Carolina with a microphone headset and a Sony voice recorder. And I did that on a slightly windy day. That’s what I was able to do and I was just testing things and playing around a little bit. Imagine what you could do if you put these tools to work. 🙂