1) Close thunder is REALLY LOUD. If you have your sensitivity turned
low enough to not rail/clip/distort close thunder, you're going to
have near silence between the thunder hits.
2) I'm not quite sure what kind of distortion you might be talking
about if you can't see it waveform displays, and it's not necessarily
in the loudest portions. Are you hearing wind rumble on your mics?
Any chance of picking up some kind of electromagnetic interference
with all of the static electricity bouncing around?
3) In a couple of sessions recording thunderstorms and fireworks, I
have found that I can't avoid clipping the really loud sounds.
There's just too much dynamic range. If I keep the bangs from
clipping, I have close to dead silence between them and the resulting
recording is incredibly dull. I think there's more interest in the
other sounds - the echo of the bang, the sound of the rain or the
fireworks crowd, all of these sounds occasionally punctuated with a
really loud bang.
4) Distant thunder is not necessarily really loud, and probably isn't
as dramatic, but records without clipping more easily.
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