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I was going through the manual of my D100 and noticed a sort of warning to avoid strong wind and water. Water is obvious i think but strong wind?

How strong wind do you guys think it could handle? Im not planing to record from outside an airplane but i dont want any damage to the mics while recording outdoors on windy days. Do you think it can handle ordinary sea breeze? Even without wind shield even if it sounds crap?

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Perhaps very strong wind can damage it – but before that happens, the wind noise will be too overwhelming for the signal to be any use at all.

So, you will need at least a foam windscreen, for anything from an ordinary sea breeze upwards. A blimp, if it's actually supposed to sound good...

Also consider that sea breeze is not like land breeze. Salt water droplets are definitely to be kept away from the diaphragm.

I should note that there's a possible exception to what I said above: large-diaphragm mics are mechanically so sensitive that, when the attenuation switch is in, the diaphragm may get damaged while the output is still in a usable range – that's why I'd hesitate to close-mic a bass drum with a large-diaphragm condenser.

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  • Thank you for your reply. To be honest, the reason why i ask i because i did record for a brief second without windscreen while wind distorted the input from the mics, pretty hard also i guess, think i used the value 5 of 10 at the preamp gain control. The wind was ordinary lake breeze strength. Could higher preamp gain damage the circuits? I did not use any limiter, and used the S/N 100 dB mode that lower the internal noise level with the cost of losing the limiter.
    – Johan Sveide
    Commented Feb 28, 2015 at 10:46
  • It won't damage the preamp circuits: like mics, these enter unusable clipping long before permanent danger is imminent. (Modern preamps tend to use jFETs; these are very sensitive, but though they can actually be damaged by static charges (eliminated by the mic input's low impedance – that's thousands of volts for a tiny short time) — a condenser mic can never output more than its 48V phantom supply, and that's no problem for any properly designed circuit.)
    – leftaroundabout
    Commented Feb 28, 2015 at 11:34
  • Great then I feel a bit more calm. Thank you for your help. 😃
    – Johan Sveide
    Commented Feb 28, 2015 at 11:48
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    Note that diaphragm damage doesn't need the mic even plugged in - the wind doesn't care.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Feb 28, 2015 at 11:58

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