It’s time for me to put a recording from my new Zoom F3 on the web.
The recording is from Stafholtstungar in Borgarfjörður, western Iceland, 4th of June 2022.
This is a 30 minutes part of another 35 hour long recording at circa 5AM. All these 35 hours I used only three 10Ah / 5V Li-Ion batteries. So each battery, which is smaller than the recorder, lasts for 12 hours.
It is different from around the mid eighties when I tried to record a natural sound on a Sony TC-D5M cassette recorder with a 4Ah acid battery that lasted for about 3 hours, or for 30 minutes with internal batteries.
The microphones in this recording were Rode NT1 in AB45 setup, dressed in Rycote WS2 windshields, about 20cm from the ground. It was recorded at 32bit / 48khz, with a recording gain at „32“ which I could believe was comparable to a 45dB gain at Sound Devices. In post-production, the recording was normalized by + 22dB up to -6dB and then converted to mp3 256kbps.
Various bird species are in the recording, such as Redwing, common snipe, common redpoll, whooper swan, raven, rock ptarmigan and definitely other birds too.
The name „Lambaklettur“ (Lamb rock) is a rocky hill above the recording site.
Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at medium or low volume
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(mp3 256kbps / 56Mb)
Recorder: Zoom F3
Mics: Rode NT1. AB45 setup
Pix: Canon Eos R
Sólheimar in Grímsnes is a fabulous place. There is an eco village that was founded in 1930. I stayed there for one night on August 16th, 2021 and of course I let the recorder run overnight. What is remarkable about this place is that it is located in a small shallow valley in the landscape, so there is not much man-made noise from the surrounding countryside. When I first visited this place 45 years ago, it was not different from many other places or farms in this county. Just several houses and unique tall trees in open moorland. Today, the landscape and the previous horizon have disappeared by forestry and new houses have been built. The place is therefore unrecognizable from what it was 45 years ago. The natural soundscape has also changed. Previously, this was a favorite land for peacocks, but with the advent of trees and vegetation, it has changed and the number of sparrows has increased. The silence is interesting in this place. It’s extremely quiet so people can call each other at a considerable distance. Over the night in calm weather, nothing is audible with bare ears. Even though the recording gain has been increased by 70dB. The only occasional sounds come from vegetation, trees or bugs. But, there is also some background noise at mid-low frequency that slowly changes the pitch during the night. I have noticed this in many quiet recordings and it seems to be slightly different from place to place. It is not possible to tell if it is related to moisture in the air or temperature. In this recording it might be a light breeze in the leaves on the top of the trees or maybe air conditioners in nearby houses. One thing is for sure, this recording was not disturbed by traffic, not even traffic somewhere far away in the county. However, this „ultra silence“ part is not what can be heard here. Recording begins at a quarter past five. The sun seems to be warming the area, because fly swarms are buzzing in the background. Birds started to call and sing half an hour earlier and people were clearly waking up. Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at mid or low level. If the media player doesn’t start to play, please reload this individual blog in a new tab or frame.
In recent years I have spent several nights in Skeiðarársandur to record the changes in the ecosystem. Skeiðarársandur is a huge broad sandy wasteland along Iceland’s south-eastern coast, between the Vatnajökull icecap and the sea. It is a wonderful place to record deep natural silence in a huge open flat landscape. For hundreds of years Skeiðarársandur has been a barren desert. but recently with shrinking glaciers and smaller glacial rivers, Birch, moss and other flora have occupied the northeast part of the sand. That means the soundscape on Skeiðarársandur will change in the future which will be interesting to record regularly in the coming years. I have usually stayed at the same spot near a traditional sheep pen because structures like that are attractive for birds like Snow bunting, Northern wheatear and Rock ptarmigan. I was very excited when I went to this spot on the 9th of June 2020. Because of COVID, there were almost no tourists in Iceland and therefore far less traffic. So I was hoping for a beautifully quiet night there. I was not disappointed either. It was calm so the silence was deep. I could hear the Atlantic ocean surf among the coastline 20-30km away, which sounds slightly like low frequency rumble in the background of this recording. I could not see any bird but bird songs came from every direction, clearly far away. During the night the glacier rumbled several times in Skaftafell national park like a thunder in the distance. Once a ship engine noise was audible out of the coastline which sounds pretty spooky. It sounds more coming from the sky rather than from the coastline in the horizon, which was probably a reflection from different temperature layers in the atmosphere. Anyway the ship engine is not audible in the following recording, but maybe in another blog. The microphone rig was on the top of the sheep pen wall, not far away from the place which I think Northern wheatear has had a nest every year since I started to record this place. (Listen to recording since mid May 2016) Luckily the Northern wheatear was not far away. This time the bird was not as angry about the hairy microphones as when I first brought the microphones in this place. The bird just sang for me for almost one hour and here comes part of it.
(mp3 256kbps / 67,7Mb)
Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at low to mid level, or in speakers at low level. If the media player doesn’t start to play, please reload this individual blog in new tab or frame
For a long time I have used Rode NT1a for nature recordings. It is a very good mic to capture the finest details in quiet soundscapes. But at the same time there is something missing in the sound quality, especially when it comes to low frequency and „audio depth“.
Last summer I got interest in IRT cross mic setup, so there was a perfect opportunity to invest in other microphones. There were not many mics to choose from with extra low self noise. Nevaton in Russia makes very interesting low noise & high sensitive mics. But my experience with MC50Quad was it did not capture the finest details of the silence as clearly as NT1a or MKH20. So I decided to invest in Lewitt LCT540s which I got for a acceptable nice price (See comparison)
I built a special shock mount for the LCT540s inside Rycote AE windshields (ORTF WS kit P/N:080210). That AE windshield is wider than normal WS windshield, especially made for stereo rigs so it is very good for large capsule, side address mics like LCT540s. Low handling noise is important for less rumbling wind noise and when it comes to LCT540, it is slightly better than NT1a.
Everything was ready for a field test in late Mars so I followed the silence into the country side. I was lucky with the weather, dry and calm, maybe too calm because it makes the silence too quiet for this field test. Anyway sometimes light gust gently wipes the top of trees and bushes which sounds fantastic in the headphones, moving slowly from left to right. It was much easier to feel the depth of the field with LCT540 than it has been with NT1a.
Nothing interesting was audible until in the early morning, about half hour before sunrise, when two Rock Ptarmigan started to „sing“. First in distance, but suddenly, maybe because of curiosity, they flied closer to the microphones and walked around the rig. The following recording is actually this moment.
It was recorded in IRT cross, which gives lot of opportunities in mixing. It gives me four different stereo recording in to four directions, all in NOS, plus many other versions too with different channel mix. It can be useful when looking into specific soundscape. It is for example possible to avoid traffic noise or other unexpected sounds from one or another direction.
The two first enclosed recording below have go through noise reduction process (above 3Khz). But the last one is a short peace without noise reduction, just as it comes from MixPre6, so you can hear the LCT540 self noise, which is about 2dB higher than in NT1a. It was recorded with 48dB gain and HPF at 40Hz. In post, I only normalize the gain level up to max, which rise the gain about +10dB. I did not change the EQ so audience can hear the sound quality at the low frequency. My feeling is that LCT540 have almost same low frequency quality as the MKH series & Nevaton which is very good
This is two versions of the same recording where I mix four channels differently into stereo. Counting channels 1-2-3-4 clockwise to L-R-Ls-Rs and the second one L-R-Rs-Ls (which is usually normal IRT setup).
This is a „high dynamic“ recording of silence, so I don´t recommend it played loud. It might destroy some speakers (ears too) if it is played too loud without attention.
Good monitor headphones are recommended or quality open headphones while listening at low to medium level.
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Recording L-R-Ls-Rs
(mp3 256Kbps / 35,6Mb)
Recording L-R-Rs-Ls
(mp3 256kbps / 35,6Mb)
Short version of recording L-R-Ls-Rs without NR
(mp3 256kbps / 7,4Mb
Recorder: Sound devices MixPre6
Mics. Lewitt LCT540s (IRT cross setup) Running on 70m Sommer Mercator CAT7 S/STP cable
Pix: Canon EOS M50
Weather: Calm, dry, between -2 to +4°C, about 7:30 o´clock
This recording is almost straight forward from the recording I posted about a year ago “Dawn in Stafholtstungur, part 1”.
Now the traffic in the county increase slowly from previous recording, but all the time it is possible to listen to the birds activity in details around the recording place.
This was recorded the 18th of October 2013, between 6 and 7 in the morning near the farm Arnarholt.
Quality headphones are recommended while listening at low level in relaxed position.
Dögun í Stafholtstungum, annar hluti
Hér er á ferðinni svo til beint framhald af upptöku sem fór á vefinn fyrir um ári síðan; “Dögun í Stafholtstungum, fyrsti hluti”. Heyra má að umferð eykst í sveitinni þar sem klukkan er farinn að ganga sjö. Gera má ráð fyrir að það heyrist í sumum bílum, þá líklega flutningabílum, um langan veg frá Norðurárdal suður til Borgarfjarðar. En þegar þögnin er sem mest er vel hægt að heyra í fuglum athafna sig í smáatriðum nærri upptökustaðnum.
Upptakan var gerð við bæinn Arnarholt þann 18. október 2013
Mælt er með því að hlusta á þessa upptöku í góðum heyrnartólum og á lágum hljóðstyrk um leið og slakað er á í þægilegum stól eða rúmi.
HLJÓÐMYND - SOUNDIMAGE 