HLJÓÐMYND – SOUNDIMAGE

Now I’m just going to fantasize. Because some recordings are stuck in my mind.
Sometimes recordings sound different than I hoped based on the experience at the recording location. In other words, the recording didn’t live up to expectations. Here’s one of them.
I’m quite aware that this can happen and so I’m not surprised anymore. Experience is visual and auditory, sometimes also olfactory. So if one of these elements is missing, the recording can sound „bad“ when you get home.
The advantage of the human brain is that it can focus on certain sounds in the distance and exclude others, similar to vision that narrows the horizon. But when it comes to microphones and stereo sound recordings, all sounds are only two-dimensional, like a photograph on a wall.
The more sensitive to detail the microphones are and the higher the resolution, the better it will be to focus on individual things and exclude others when listening. But it often doesn’t tell you much about depth or distance. Recordings made in open spaces don’t give much information about distance. The sounds are just in front of you like an image. But if you record in a forest, for example, where distant sounds are reflected between trees, your brain can get a slightly clearer picture of depth and distance in the stereo recording.
Here’s a recording that illustrates this nicely. A large, wide area, although it’s surrounded by mountains on three sides. Natural sounds are very quiet, while the background noise is „very loud“, coming from the streams in the surrounding mountains.
When I was there, the environment sounded much more peaceful. It felt almost dead silent, probably because my focus was on the birdlife and I paid little attention to the streams. I wasn’t in the same place as the microphones. They were closer to the shore and therefore also recording the sea as it gently lapping against the gravel at the shore. But those sounds were actually added to the background noise from nearby streams and rivers. The background noise is therefore much louder than I experienced at the recording location.
You can also hear „stones being thrown into the sea“ near the recording location. But these were actually Arctic terns stepping onto the ocean surface in search of food up to 200-400 meters away. But in the recording you would think it was happening at a distance of 5-15 meters.
The picture that this audio recording is giving is therefore quite different from the visible reality at the recording location.
I am not going to spend too much time writing about this different experience, because I am quite sure that those who do field recordings know this quite well.
To give an indication of how quiet nature was at the recording site, the recording was recorded at +48dB gain and in the sound processing it was necessary to raise it by another +20dB to reach -7dB to normalize.
It should also be noted that I did not use noise reduction.
Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at low or comfortable level.
If the media player doesn’t start to play, please reload this individual blog in a new tab or frame.

(mp3 256kbps / 60Mb)

Recorder: Sound devices MixPre6
Mics: Lewitt LCT540s (IRT cross)
Pix: Samsung S22

Location: 65.823922, -22.646058
Weather: Calm, clear sky, about 6°C