Mike,
Nice thunder recordings and nice distortion. I've only just got round
to listening to your track and the essential thing with explosions,
gunfire and thunder is to run the recording into distortion. Kids
playing cops and robbers go "kishh kishh" because this is the sound
Hollywood dubs on. An undistorted recording just goes "plop". I once
tried to record gunshots with a Nagra SN miniature tape recorder and
the limiter was so fast, the gunshot was not much louder than the
hammer click. The gunshot sound used by the media is synthetic, based
on a gated white noise generator to simulate the reverberation from a
loud noise.
The border line between a supersonic pressure wave and the loudest
sound possible is 194dB (SPL). The air itself has already limited the
sound level, and our ears overload around 140 dB (SPL) That's around
50dB limiting level and that is the sound we have to try to reproduce,
in the mic, in the preamp, in the recorder or in all three.
The waveform of your recordings is flat topped showing a high degree
of limiting and is about right. To my ears the first thunder is more
distant and has lost the higher frequencies in the cloud along with
the initial "ultrasonic boom" pressure wave. I like the last closer
peal with the pre-strike crackling which is so often cut off in dubbed
thunder on TV and films.
David
David Brinicombe
North Devon, UK
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce
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