Kin,
An excellent recording and it sounds quieter in Surrey than down here
in rural North Devon. I like the stereo placement - what mics are you
using? There is also very little "phasey" background effect which some
systems produce. I reckon I can hear 9 sonels - discrete sound "pixel"
directions and a good score.
> Small sections of background drone are audible in a couple places
> (most noticeably around the 5:40 mark -- I can't even tell for sure
> if it is a distant car or a home furnace firing up or what exactly).
I contructed an Audacity filter with a brutal cut above 150Hz. The
power spectum shows a broad peak at about 70Hz which is resonant and
comes and goes. I think the sound originally comes from distant
traffic and/or distant aircraft rather than wind, but carried by the
wind, but it may be all three. There's something resonating this with
a dimension around 2.5 metres or an echo at about 5 metres path
difference, or it could be something in the mic rig. I wouldn't rate
this as a serious problem and it could easily be trimmed out by a
bespoke filter. I's well clear of the pigeons which dominate the
spectrogram. See the power spectrum taken from a quiet bit around
04:30 on
www.stowford.org/images/spectrum110525.gif
which has resonant peaks at around 70Hz and 100Hz. There rest are
birds.
I have a grain mill over a mile away which sometimes puts out a whine
which comes and goes in the wind. I got church bells a couple of
evenings ago behind the birds. I like environmental sounds with the
wildlife, and get the neighbour's sheep and cattle, but preferably not
cars or planes which are boring. The whine is a single frequency and
easily taken out by a notch filter, again using the Audacity custom
Equalisation feature.
I recorded this in wind and rain this morning:
http://soundcloud.com/stowfordnature/wind-rain-and-thrush-in-pig
I wasn't in the wind and rain but the mics were, in a tent.
Sometimes it's so quiet here I hear mic hiss even on my Sennheisers,
and I reduce that with the noise reduction on Audacity which is
selective, You show it what you want taken out and it reduces just
that by a number of dBs. Noise reduction tends to destroy the ambience
and certainly reduces reverberation which is so nice on your
recording.
My general rule is to leave backgrounds in, but to tailor that to what
the ear hears, like wind noise which is worse on a mic, but your ears
tend to ignore it.
That noise around 5:40 is a puzzle. It could be a woodpecker pecking
wood rather than drumming or a close nuthatch but there's too much
echo for that. It could be a creak of course and a lister posted a
recording of a creaky tree a few weeks back.
David
David Brinicombe
North Devon, UK
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce
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