My boss and fellow classmate playing Left 4 Dead after hours at work.  You can hear the sound of Zombies in the game, gunfire, a pipe bomb beeping and exploding, my classmate getting scared as she alerts a horde of zombies, my boss getting mad at one of the non-playable characters for not getting into the safehouse and the music indicating that section of the game is over.

EL 141209 - Zombies Or Infected?

CC 141209 Dorm Shower

CC 141209 Dorm Hallway

TMS. House Refrigerator (311 East Uintah, 1st floor, 1PM) 

I put the mic up to our kegerator, a beer keg cooling object, which is usually only turned on when we host parties. The fridge itself is short and squat (about 3'x3.5') and made of plastic. It is shoved into a corner of our kitchen, which is a rectangular (20'x10') space with wood floors and drywall/plaster walls. In this recording, the kegerator is plugged in, but not turned on cold--sort of in idle mode. There are three particular sounds: 1. A loud gurgling/electric sound 2. Just the electric hum, gurgle dissipated 3. A clear click, then the electric hum cuts out, leaving a static room noise. The fridge is working to regulate its temperature but does this function in increments. I kept the microphone completely stationary, right next to a top corner of the machine during the recording. The most interesting sound is the ringing metallic beat that carries on throughout each of the three separate sound functions.

TMS - 141209 - HouseRefrigerator

One of my favorite on-campus restaurants, a 20' x 35' space mostly made out of wood, with strips of metal lining the walls. The reverb time within the space is about a second, which is longer than I would have expected. This is likely due to the reverb off of the metal in the room. The churning of the horchata machine, kitchen sounds (grilling hiss, cash register opening/closing, crinkling sound of paper), a high pitched hum (lights? horchata reverb?), and the door to the restaurant opening and closing every so often, can all be heard from the interior of the restaurant. The sound of the churning horchata machine is amplified far above what I heard without the mic. It has a high pitched whine to it--a metallic groan with an unstable volume. There is also a general hiss, a static microphone sound, that persists throughout. All of the kitchen sounds are much clearer than they were without the mic. It is almost as if there is a mic behind the counter relaying information to my mic as I listen to an employee taking orders from several customers.

TMS - 141209 - LA'AUS

TMS. Bridge and Pathway behind El Pomar, 7:00PM

Most of the audible sound comes from the cars moving along I25, slightly muffled by the 20ft barrier, and the cars in the parking lot behind me. The noise floor is about 68 Db at the point between the bridge and pathway, which is much lower than I would have expected (considering the highway is about 30 meters away). My footsteps crunch against the gravel, but my footsteps on the pavement are much harder to distinguish (although I do say, "now I'm walking on the sidewalk" at some point). The area behind El Pomar is mostly paved and the bridge is 100% concrete, but there is a long gravel path that runs perpendicular to the small river. There is also a little park with some trees to the left of the path. The reverb time was about a second, with a small amount of slapback when I faced away from the barrier.

TMS - 141209 - BridgePathBehindElPomar

TMS. Apple Store, 3:30PM

The store is located in a strip mall about a half mile away from I25. The space is 80'x40' (plus or minus 10'). The exterior of the store, like most of the businesses in this area, is made up of metal, concrete, and stucco. The interior materials are tile (floor), metal (walls), and a porous acoustic treatment (ceiling). While I'm inside the store, I raise/lower the mic several times to get slightly different frequencies. "Genius" voices and customers make up most of the noise floor, which medium-high for a public space (about 68 Db). There are a ton of people moving around and stationary objects to absorb reverb. Like many of the other recordings in closed public spaces, the voices blend together. Just as one person begins to say something, it is masked by the next person's sentence.

TMS - 141209 - AppleStore

TMS. Qdoba Mexican Grill, 5:PM.

Qdoba is located in the same strip mall area as the Apple store, so the exterior descriptions are relatively similar. Most of the buildings in this condensed businesss area are made out of stucco, concrete, and metal. When I first walk in the door, a woman is asking a costomer what he or she wants. Even by the time I sit down several meters (10 or so) away from the counter, her high pitch voice masks most of the other room sounds. This could also be due to me shifting my attention to her voice and the funny ways she says things: "Do you want black beeeeens, or pIIIIIInTOOOO?". The interior of the building is similar to the apple building: stucco/metal walls and ceilings, and several tables and chairs made of wood. Likely, all of the buildings in this wing of the mall are build by the same architect and construction team. However, the floor is carpeted and the reverb time is slightly less, about a half second. So that may have absorbed some of the sound. Q'doba is a little smaller dimensionally (about 40'x20') and has less people running around but has much higher intelligibility. It has a consistant interior noise floor of about 73Db

TMS - 141209 - Qdoba

We walked by a group of people hanging out with a dog, which is what you hear at the beginning of the recording. We then walk through a park on some leaves which created a great rustling sound. Eventually we get to the creek and you can hear the water rushing by. All of the sounds have a direct transmission path with a fairly small reverb time because we were outside. 

LB- Creek

CM 120914 the Arc

This is when I went to the Manitou arcade late at night and the whole thing was closed. There was a loud generator making a sound, and if you can hear the high pitched squeal, it's coming from speakers around the tavern. I think they might be playing that sound to deter children from hanging around their business. Some of the arcade kiddie rides still had their sounds on, so every once in a while you would hear rumble or a catch-phrase. This is another example of how to develop a spooky soundscape. 

ThinkingWithYourEars

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