Recording fireworks is probably like photographing a sunset for a photographer. Nothing special but there is always some duty that calls for it to be done.
It is not the loud sound that fascinates, but the interaction of the sound with the environment. Reflection of a sound wave. e.g. the echoes from houses, mountains or trees that make it interesting to record fireworks. The problem, however, is that I am often confined to staying at home with my family on this day. I am therefore not in different places from year to year, and therefore I have to say that I have not made a good or interesting recording of fireworks, apart from maybe one recording in Tenerife. I’m also always experimenting with microphone setups, which usually don’t work out well when there’s a lot of other things going on.
It is with mixed feelings that I put a fireworks recording on the web this time. Have done it before and therefore not urgent to do it again because it always sounds as a loud noise which is not healthy for the ears or speakers.
But this new year is marked by terrible wars, which unfortunately all have their origins to the western hegemony and imperialism, as usual. Most recently with the targeted genocide in Palestine which as of this writing can easily escalate into an even bigger war, more or less all over the middle east.
The NATO proxy war in Ukraine is still going on after almost ten years conflict. It has destroyed Ukraine and seems to be also destroying Europe in coming years, if not in decades because of politicians stupidity. This time, the West, led by the United States, EU & GB has lost both credibility and the trust of most nations in the world.
The world is changing. US unipolar empire is falling and new multipolar empires are rising. At the same time, the US will drag Europe down in the fall and destroy Europe as a flourishing continent, only because of insane hatred towards Russia.
The new year therefore does not seem to offer anything good for many nations, but only continued with conflict and disaster. Fireworks with all its noise are therefore no longer part of entertainment in my mind, but a reminder of war with destruction, killings and mutilations.
This recording was made in my backyard, between houses with LCT540s in IRT. You can hear that the echo time is short. Some might think it’s because I used a Limiter. But the Limiter was turned off, as always should be done when recording fireworks. Recording sound pressure rose to a peak of +7.7dB (-7.4 LUFS-S) .
Details that can often be heard in fireworks when they are launched are not heard clearly in this recording because they were launched from beyond the houses in this backyard. However, I had another microphone set (MKH20/40 parallel AB) close to a place where people were setting off fireworks, but that recording did not go well for various reasons.
Even though this recording has been downgraded to mp3, be careful when listening to this recording. Don´t put up the volume, especially not when listening with speakers.
Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at mid/high-level.
Following picture shows the spectrogram of the whole recording this new years eve. But following recording start at 22:30min. Midnight is at 30:00min and the recording end at 52:30min
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I do quite a bit of recording music, so it would be nice to be able to publish some of it here, especially music that I think is extremely well played and where the recording has been successful. For example, I have often wanted to put classical music on the web in December and January. But professionals have little interest in giving permission for this, possibly because I only ask these people once.
So I’m going to share different music instead, which is even more beautiful than all music, but it’s birdsong in the spring.
Here is a recording from last spring that I had forgotten I had recorded.
I had a Zoom F3 device recording in several places almost non-stop for several days in Stafholtstungur, western Iceland. I used Rode NT1 microphones and set them up to NOS 90°/30cm. It can hardly be considered the best setup for such long nature recordings. The reason is that sounds such as background noise from the wind, rustling of leaves, running streams and traffic can change a lot in 24 hours, so the sound pressure between channels can easily go out of balance. It can even be detected in this recording. Some traffic can be detected at a distance of 5-10 km in the (left) channel. That’s why it’s usually best to record in AB 40-50cm, if you’re going to record for a long time.
But since I primarily record natural „silence“, there are not many microphones that handle silence well and the ones that do it best are all cardioid, which has led me to start recording a lot in IRT (4ch 90°/30cm)
In some cases, it is possible to set the cardioid up to AB 40-50cm, but you cannot do that unless you intend to record from one direction. In this place the sounds were coming from all directions so it was not available.
It’s a low-key recording, actually amplified silence. Recorded at „Zoom gain at 256“ and HPF 40hz. In post-processing the recording was normalized (+25) up to -7dB
There is a lot of recorded material here that I feel is a shame to be forgotten on hard disks, so I’m going to allow myself to call this „Part 1“ because Part 2 and 3 and more also need to get here on the web.
The footage will therefore not be exactly from the recording location, but not further than 500 meters away.
Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at low to mid volume.
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(mp3 256kbps /66,5Mb)
Recorder: Zoom F3
Mics Rode NT1 (NOS 90°/30cm)
Mics: Canon EOS R
Weather: Calm, partly cloudy, around 7 to 10°C
On October 15, 2023, a solidarity meeting with Palestine was held at Austurvelli in downtown Reykjavík. I think I could estimate that about 5-6 hundred people came to the meeting, which can be considered quite good by Icelandic standards
The week before, on October 7th, western propaganda media had reported some vague attack by „Hamas“ forces that was considered terrorism against civilians of the so-called „state of Israel“. Much is still unclear about what will happen on this October day. Even the occupiers themselves were not all on the same page about what really happened that day, as it became clear that Apache military helicopters from the occupying forces had probably caused more damage and killed even more people than „Hamas“ forces in some places.
But if Hamas had done something, it was enough for the „Israeli“ occupation authorities to think they had the right to let bombs rain on innocent civilians in the world’s most densely populated area, the Gaza strip. Gaza is nothing more than a concentration camp, fully controlled by this „Israel“ fascist colony state, supported by the west since 1948.
More about this conflict: The untold history of Hamas. The ‘Hamas human shield’ justification for Israeli war crimes Why does the US support Israel?
I am not going to comment further on these miserable conditions that the Palestinians have had to withstand for 75 years. It is quite clear that the legacy of Hitler and the imperialist policies of the West is ruling the occupied Palestine.
At Austurvöllur on October 15, several speeches were given as well as songs. To be able to stick to the time frame, I took out one speech and the songs.
(mp3 256kbps / 60Mb)
Recorder: Sound devices MixPre6
Mics: DIY Stereo mic. Double Primo EM172 capsules in AB baffled/binaural setup
Pix: Samsung G22
Weather: Cloudy, wind up to 4m/s, about 2°C
Location: 64.147308, -21.940289
One of the things I’m quite interested in is recording space weather or „auroral chorus“ with a ELF/VLF receiver.
This space weather is electrically charged particles coming from the sun into the upper atmosphere, the same ones that form the northern lights, or Aurora.
The receiver therefore only detects radio frequency on a very long wavelength or at 20hz up to 20Khz
The problem, however, is that I have never been able to devote enough time to this hobby. So I don’t have many recordings of this material.
It is not enough to have a lot of equipment. I really need to have knowledge of the subject to get what I want. To be in the right place and time when events happen in the solar system and in the Earth’s thermosphere. In addition, I am always busy not letting technical ignorance affect the quality of recordings, so knowing antenna theory and receiver design is also important. But in antenna studies I know nothing, especially because of my poor math skills.
Due to lack of time, I did not even build the tuner, which is though very simple, so I bought a tuner from Stephen P McGreevy. That receiver is made for two loop antennas, so it is possible to record in stereo.
Through poor skills, I have prepared two types of antennas. One is built according to Stephan’s specification, which is nice in many ways, but takes on too much wind which sometimes interferes with the recording. Then I have make another one that unfortunately produces (or receives) a lot of „pink noise“. But that antenna is fast to set up and very convenient for finding the right X/Y axis for stereo recording.
But not everything is counted. As well as air and noise pollution from people, there is also an enormous amount of strong electrical pollution everywhere in human settlements, literally in all frequency ranges. So I also need to find places where there is little or no electrical pollution. I’m also not allowed to be near tall trees or high mountains. High voltage lines, radio transmitters and electrical fences must be many kilometers away. It therefore puts a lot of strain on patience and long journeys that are often fruitless. I therefore try to use the time I use for nature recordings to record simultaneously VLF space weather recordings.
It was just the other day that I discovered a place incredibly close to Reykjavík that was remarkably free of electrical pollution, as well as a request from a composer and two musicians for a recording, that made me see if I could pull out the equipment and start recording something. Probably make better antennas.
But as the sun is quite calm these days, actually these months and years according to the „annual solar cycle„, it could be a difficult task to get a good recording.
Therefore, here is a recording from mid August 2017, recorded at Skeiðarásandur south east Iceland. The recording location is far from mountains and human settlements, several kilometers from the nearest high-voltage line or electric fence . It was therefore relatively easy to clean electrical pollution from the recording. However, you can see in spectrogram (and hear) various weak radio signals and pulses, but most of them are above 15Khz.
This is not a „strong“ recording. In a real solar storm the „sparking sound“ is more powerful with more depth and colorful sounds. My favorite sound in space weather recordings is „Whistler„. I have only heard it once with my equipment, but Iceland is actually not located on the best latitude.
(mp3 256Kbps / 60,8Mb)
Recorder: Olympus LS10
ELF/VLF Receiver: WR-9STL
Antenna: Two 3 meters high triangle loops, X/Y setup on carbon fiber boom pole
It doesn’t happen often that my recordings are „interrupted“ by animals. But it happened last weekend when I was recording at my traditional place in Stafholtstungur in western Iceland. This time it was mice that seemed to gnaw the rubber on the tripod or the cables that ran up to the microphones. When the recording had been going on for three hours and it was 3 o’clock in the morning, the commotion in the mice started to keep me awake. It was as if they had gnawed a hole all the way into the windshield. So I went out and gave them a piece of cake next to the microphone stand. That made them stop biting the microphones. Instead, they started gnawing on the cake, which you can clearly hear after I brought the slice of cake.
This is traditional night silence. The background noise is mainly the wind in the leaves as well as the traffic of individual cars several kilometers away. I did not clean the internal mic noise in this recording as there is no need for it. Here it was recorded with 48dB gain on SD788 and in post-processing the volume was increased by +10dB up to peak -5dB.
Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at low to mid volume.
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I far too rarely go out to sea or lakes to record underwater soundscapes. The problem is probably that I need to get to a depth of 30 meters or more, be calm and smooth seas and be free of ship and boat traffic. In places where currents can be expected, I prefer to be able to attach to a buoy, because I want to be able to record for an hour or more.
Such situations are not directly accessible around me, but sometimes places are discovered in the most unlikely places. I found one not far from my workplace, which is the largest shipping port in Iceland.
There were no cargo ships in port, so I was probably free from engine noise. Not far away were 3 large cruise ships. But the remarkable thing about these ships was that there was no engine noise from them, although I know that the ships are not connected to land. There was only a strong 22Khz signal, probably from a sonar which I could easily delete in post processing so it shouldn’t bother those with good hearing.
In my opinion, this is not a remarkable recording, but still you can hear a „natural silence“ even if there were some waves on the surface, which usually produces white noise. I settled on a pontoon dock south east of Viðey island during the high tide, to be able to have the maximum depth which was 6-7 meters.
It was a good place to be able to sit on the pier for a while and forget myself while listening to the soundscape of the sea below while the recorder recorded.
It had been raining heavily hours before so the loudest thing in this recording is the raindrops falling from the pier floor to the sea above the hydrophones.
Shortly after the recording starts, there is a light rain shower which is clearly heard as added noise. Behind all this noise from water drops and rain, you can hear soft clicks and sparks that I suspect are coming from Blue Mussels and a low-short „fart“ sound that I think is coming from Pollock. At one point in the recording, you can hear bubbles, possibly methane gas, coming up from the ocean floor. Other strange sounds similar to birdsong can also be detected, which are not easy to identify where they are coming from. It is therefore important to pay attention while listening.
This is a recording made at midnight. Perhaps more life would have been heard on a bright, sunny day. But since I have made some nice recordings in the sea in the last months in several places, this recording seems to describe a rather typical acoustic environment inside the fjords along the coast of Iceland.
Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at low to mid volume.
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Early in July 2023 I spent one night at Sultártangalón lagoon recording in three locations.
In the morning when I was leaving, it was sunny, calm and very hot, in the Icelandic way. The sight over the mirror smooth lagoon made me stop the car and enjoy the view. The recorders were ready and connected in the car, so I quickly set them up by the reservoir and took a short walk while they were recording.
The result was this. Typical Icelandic highland silence. Nothing interesting as an audio recording, but what caught my attention was the background noise of waterfalls and streams across the lagoon. This noise changed the EQ slowly in a variable thermal upstream due to the influence of the sun radiation.
Several bird species can be heard in this recording. These include Raven, Golden Plover, Dunlin, White Wagtail, Meadow Pipit and Red Throated Loon.
This was recorded with MKH8020/8040 in a fur wind shield, which was not the best choice, because the silence was considerable. Audio was recorded on MP6 with 50dB gain and in post-processing the gain was increased by another 20dB so they reached -10dBu.The MKH microphones were therefore not the most suitable for this moment. It would have been better if I had recorded with the LCT540s in IRT, to better capture all the small details all around.
To cancel out the loss of certain frequencies due to the fur wind shield, I raised the mid frequency by +2dB.
This is a rather sensitive recording. So I wasn’t using RX de-noise. But instead since nothing in the recording reaches frequencies higher than 8Khz, I lowered the EQ above 10Khz by a few dB to reduce the self noise in the microphones.
Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at low to mid volume.
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I already promised to have a microphone comparison now for the month of June to confirm the quality of the SE8 microphone compared to others e.g. MKH8040.
But when I was going to work on the recordings I made last April, I noticed a 7khz noise revealed in one of the two SE8s. This noise had also annoyed me when I did the comparison, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Just thought the SE8 was that bad.
Today I didn’t hear this noise and I didn’t see anything strange on the spectrogram. Plus this SE8 now sounds better too. The comparison will therefore be repeated later so that people can take it into account if they invest in SE8.
I can’t say what happened that caused this 7Khz noise. I had actually never plugged the microphone to 48V until the day I made the comparison. So it may be that it was necessary to „burn in“ the mic’s circuit for a several hours before use.
But I tested the SE8 in two of three concerts I recorded at the end of May. It turns out that the SE8 is quite interesting. It is therefore likely that I will have it with me in my tool bag at future gigs, although the Nevaton MC59C are and will always be my first choice.
At first glance, the SE8 appears to be more strategic than e.g. MKH8040 or MC59C. But I dare not confirm it until I repeat the comparison that failed in April
So to keep my promise to deliver some information about the SE8, here is a comparison between the SE8 and the MC59C.
This is a recording of a concert I recorded about a week ago with the great mezzo-soprano singer, painter and actress Tinna Þorvalds Önnudóttir.
This comparison doesn’t say much about whether the SE8 is good for music. There is, for example, missing all the low frequencies that are extremely important to sound smoothly and correctly in phase. But there is the SE8 side by side to the MC59c which are, in my opinion, the very best mic I can choose for all acoustic music.
The installation of the microphones took into account the location of Tinna and the piano was in a narrow space in front of the audience seats. So this does not sound like a studio recording because at the same time there was considerable movement on Tinna and in one composition two other singers were involved (which cannot be heard here).
At the beginning of the recording you can hear a weak „blue whispering noise“. It can be heard occasionally while Tinna sings, but it comes from the dress she wears.
These recordings came directly from the recorder, no EQ. I only normalize the level and downgrade to mp3. Except the mix of both MC59C and SE8, there I use Soothe 2 to slightly soften the midrange.
I got Tinna’s kind permission to use her vocals in this post.
SE8 (+16.20 dB added to normalize the level)
(mp3 256kbps / 5Mb)
MC59C (+14.55 dB added to normalize the level)
(mp3 256kbps / 5Mb)
MC59C & SE8 mixed together ( +12.85 dB added to normalize the level)
(mp3 256kbps / 5Mb)
I was reminded this winter that I should record more street life. I’ve always had that in mind, but somehow it’s always something in nature that fascinates me more.
On Labor Day earlier this month, I went down to the center of Reykjavík to record human life and the traditional program on this great day. Instead of going on a mass march through the streets of the city, I went straight down to Hallærisplan square and waited for the marchers and brass bands..
A large stage with a sound system had been set up in the square and there were only a few people. But shortly after I had started the recording, marchers and brass bands came rushing onto the square. The speeches of the day were nothing special, but the music was fine. It will not be audible here, except of course the brass bands that accompanied the mass march.
It took me a while to decide to put this recording on the web. It sounds bad in HD650 headphones, but slightly better in MDR7506.
But the remarkable thing about this recording in my opinion is the hum, noise or tone at 4Khz, 6Khz 8Khz and 10Khz. Anyone with trained hearing can hear these tones in this recording below, although an unrelated fan hum is also evident in the recording.
I first noticed this noise when I was recording COVID silence in the same square during the „lock down“ in the first weeks of the COVID, in the spring of 2020. Then it only came from one direction and also contained 15khz which is not audible now.
However, I have never been able to locate the source of this noise. I thought for a long time that this noise was coming from a broken transformer for the LED lighting. But here it was a clear day and all lights were off so this noise is coming from something else.
(mp3 256kbps / 61,2Mb)
Recorder: Sound devices MixPre6
Mics: Primo EM172 / EM272 capsules v. LOM phantom power amps (Baffled AB)
Pix: Samsung S22
The remarkable thing happened in the winter of 2022-2023 in Iceland, at least in the southwest, that there were many consecutive days with severe frost. The winter was undeniably reminiscent of the winters of the 1970s and 1980s, when catastrophic or global warming had neither become tangible nor existed in the dictionary.
This gave me the opportunity to record under ice, which I hadn’t done before.
I invested in a proper ice drill and managed to make three trips to Skorradalsvatn lake to record under and over the ice. But the lake is located about an hour’s drive from Reykjavík.
It was surprising that the sounds from frozen lakes are not produced by the frost alone and the variable expansion of the ice. Rather, it primarily depends on the wind strength, size and depth of the lake.
Although everything seems flat and there are no waves visible on the ice surface, there is a lot going on. Especially under the ice, where there is clearly significantly more noise than on the surface. On the surface, you hear mainly „drone squeals“ and occasional clicks and breaks, which are also interesting to record.
The following recording was recorded approx. in 8 meters depth, not far from the place where the lake is deepest, or about 60 meters. Many things can be said about this recording. I’m not entirely happy with it, which I’m not going to mention here. But recording ice on lakes is clearly a very interesting subject. Something I hope to be able to do much more often in the future.
Depth and size of the lake. Shape of the lake and lake bed, volume of wind and snow, ice thickness and ice temperature, everything matters if I like to catch these amazing sounds.
I’m always traveling alone, so I didn’t take any risks by going far out on the ice this time. But I will definitely try it sometime if mother nature and luck gives me such a perfect winter again.
Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at low to mid volume. There are a lot of very powerful sounds in this recording that can easily damage your hearing and speakers. I therefore do not recommend high volume
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HLJÓÐMYND - SOUNDIMAGE 