> It is my almost first recording of a stream (or small waterfall) in
> a forest.
>
> https://soundcloud.com/motoman77/small-waterfall
Robert,
Water is often difficult to record, but your recording makes it sound
wet. :-) A little while back, someone posted a recording of rain which
included a gurgling drain pipe - not very loud but enough to make it
all sound wet as rain can often sound like hail if it doen't include
splashing.
In your recording there are lots of gurgles and "tunes" so you know
it's water, which i good, but you are looking for advice. Try to make more=
of a "story" of your recording, or any recording for that matter. What are
you describing in sound? You have the wall of water, but not a river
flowing past you. That's where stereo helps.
Cardioid mics at 90 degrees give a stereo image of a stereo object, but
it is like a super fisheye lens on a camera. Everything is shrunk down
small. The mic null points are at left 135deg and right 135deg giving
right and left image points 270deg apart - that wide. Your waterfall
took up less than half of that angle judging from the stereo image and
the photograph.
For a "story line" you're describing a river flowing past. It runs
through a pool and river banks, over a waterfall and on as a shallow
flow, surrounded by forest. Get the mics down low (without getting them wet=
)
and listen for other musical water sounds. The waterfall will largely look=
after itself and could go to one side with shallow and closer river "tunes"=
being played at the other side. Listen for hollows and reverberation from
the banks and forest to add perspective.
If you are not getting enough stereo separation, try a piece of
cardboard between the mics. My test for this is to walk around the mic
setup shaking peanuts in a canister and then listening to the
recording.
Noise tends to be a problem with built-in mics, but it will be well
swamped by water hiss. This means you can record at a low level in
case something loud happens. With digital recording generally you can
pull the level up 12dB afterwards, or more, without a quality loss,
but hitting an automatic level control on peaks is not repairable and
ruins the recording.
The normal peak levels for final edited recordings are about -6dB to -3dB
below 100%.
Have fun!
David
David Brinicombe
North Devon, UK
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce
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