The European fire-bellied toad is, in fact, a frog. (No fire, either.) However, this is more than compensated by its satisfyingly fun-to-say Latin name: Bombina bombina. They also produce antimicrobial peptides in their skin secretions – the even more fun-to-say ‘bombinins’. 

Native to eastern mainland Europe – recorded here in the protected land of Poland’s Barycz Valley Landscape Park – they use their internal vocal sacs to produce their “whoop” call: the mournful, slow-motion honk immortalized here. Imagine the sound that clowns might make when they cry and you won’t be far off.

Bombina bombina mysterious call

Rooftop Morning Seagulls And Crows, Istanbul, Turkey

Street Vendor On Megaphone, Da Nang, Vietnam

Northwestern University Library - Vent

Rotary Gas Meter

Recorded on the land of the Peramangk people.
Deep, slow, careful listening required.
Read the Playlist description for more information: https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/sets/2023-iron-curtain-autumn-and-summer

2023.03.16 Iron Curtain. Early Autumn.

An hour before sunrise in a secluded valley mire in Dartmoor National Park. Snipe (Gallinago gallinago) are performing their "winnowing" courtship display, flying up and diving downwards so their tail feathers vibrate with a distinctive thrumming sound. Tawny Owls and Cuckoo call across the valley.

Recorded on 1st May 2023 with 2 x AT4022 microphones in an Olson stereo array (www.trackseventeen.com/mic_rigs.html) and a Sound Devices 722 recorder.

May Day Snipe

This is a very high-gain recording, the forests are so quiet in this part of Sweden, I like the idea of really opening up the gain.  MixPre3 the gain set to 74db, with a pair of Lewitt 440's.  Recording 4000.

Stream (1) -  12 May 23 - 11am - Dalsvallen

At the crossroads of day and night, diurnal birds meet nocturnal animals for a precious hour. Thus the black-crowned night herons, doves, ducks meet the roar of the deer, the fleeting bats and the tawny owl, in a unique and precious soundscape in the heart of the forest of Orléans, the biggest forest in France

Crépuscule Automnal À L'étang Du Ravoir (Automn Nightfall At Ravoir's Pound)

Recording I made while waiting in a parking lot to get out until the rain shower was over.

Rain on the roof of a car - interior

PodCast

Rain on the roof of a car - interior (September 21st, 2023)

This test is comparing the self-noise of the Sony PCM-A10 and the Olympus LS-P4 at various gain settings using external microphones (Clippy EM172). Both recorders allow gain settings from 1-30. I recorded the same sound source (quiet ticking clock) at levels 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and then 30 simultaneously on both recorders and then normalised the levels in Reaper. I then had to do quite a bit of manual correction of the levels because there were some low frequency sounds that were louder than the ticking clock and which were messing with the normalisation process. Recordings were made at 24/48 WAV.

In this recording you first hear the Sony at gain level 1, followed by the Olympus at gain level 1 and so on up to level 30.

As shown in an earlier test the Olympus exhibits much higher levels of self noise at lower gain settings, with a noticeable improvement coming at level 20. This means that when recording quiet scenes, it is worth taking the risk of setting the gain high to minimise the recorder self noise.

The Sony behaves quite differently. At gain level 1 the noise is quite terrible  but at level 5 there is a sudden improvement and in fact there is almost no difference between the noise at level 5 and level 30. This seems to suggest that you can be much more conservative with setting the gain on the Sony to avoid clipping, and increase the levels later in post with no apparent self-noise penalty.

Sony PCM - A10 VS Olympus LS - P4

Stereo soundscape recordings. Sometime nature, sometimes people, sometimes machinery. Sometimes quiet things like a single branch creaking in the wind on Dartmoor, sometimes odd moments in the city. Mostly local, but sometimes travelling. 

Sony PCM - A10 VS Olympus LS - P4

Douglas Langley

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