Category Archives: Ambience

Ambience Field recording Water

Sauna

December 31, 2012 – 12:30 pm


My wife is of Finnish descent. She had, of course, made sure that we had access to a sauna during our Christmas holiday. I grabbed the chance to record some sound effects there.

This particular sauna is a bit noisy because of draft from the chimney, but I decided to give it a go and capture the sounds I could. I recorded ambience close to the stove first. Afterwards I started splashing water at the rocks on top of the stove. The recorder had to be positioned very close to the rocks to avoid the noise from the chimney. It quickly got pretty hot, both for me and my Zoom H2. I recorded for as long as I thought my recorder could take it. My H2 is getting old now and I often use it as an expendable recorder, but I didn’t want to destroy it for this. I got out of the sauna when the Zoom started getting dangerously hot.

The water splashes turned out pretty nice. I did have to roll off a bit of low end to get rid of the worst rumble noise from the chimney. I also had to fade out the sounds at the end when the signal/ambient noise ratio got too bad.

Equipment used: Zoom H2

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Ambience Field recording

Room dryer

April 9, 2012 – 6:22 pm

So, I haven’t had too much time for recording and updating the blog lately. Finally, It looks like I’m starting to get things under control again and the urge to record is returning.

If you’ve ever had a water leak in your house, you’ve probably heard a room dryer in action. Unfortunately, now it was my turn.. The room dryer is blowing hot air into the kitchen to dry out the wet floor. It makes quite a bit of noise and it can be heard throughout the apartment. I set up my Zoom H2 a couple of places to record the dryer from different perspectives. It turned out pretty well and I’m sure this can be used for some kind of industrial ambience later on.

Note: The whole kitchen is wrapped in plastic which you can hear moving in the breeze in some of the recordings.

Equpiment used: Zoom H2

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Ambience Field recording

Cruise wind

January 22, 2012 – 1:17 pm


On a recent work trip, I traveled by ship to Germany with my colleagues. Our schedule was pretty full, but I figured I would have at least a little time to record something.


My original plan was to spend my free time in the shopping and casino area. To record ambience, that is.. I set up my Zoom H2 a couple of different places, but I just could not find anywhere to record ambience without recording lots of music as a bonus. All the shops and restaurants were playing music a little too loud. I tried walking up a couple of floors to get away from the music, but still no luck.


After a while I found myself close to the sun deck on the top floor. I could not hear the music from the shopping area anymore, but I could hear something else: wind. I followed the sound to the sun deck door and found that this was a good place to record. I did not get any usable shopping or casino ambiences out of this trip, but I did get a nice wind recording.

Equipment used: Zoom H2

Bonus: The toilet in my cabin sounded like this:

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Ambience Field recording

New Year’s Eve 2011

January 16, 2012 – 8:10 pm


On New Year’s Eve 2011 the weather was not very nice where I was. It was raining and it was quite windy. For a while, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be recording anything that day. Fortunately, I did manage to find a relatively safe place to record this year too. I found a corner where my recorder was protected from the rain and relatively protected from the wind. The noise you can hear in the recording is the wind blowing through a nearby hedge. It got pretty noisy at times..

And this completes the firework blog posts (for a while at least..).

Equipment: Zoom H2 with Rode dead cat. Location: Ålgård, Norway

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Ambience Field recording

New Year’s Eve 2010

December 31, 2011 – 1:45 pm
Zoom H2 with Rode dead cat

Happy new year, everyone! I wish you all the best and hope that 2012 will be a peaceful and good year.

I was planning on setting up my recorder and capture some of the fireworks. Unfortunately, the weather is looking pretty bad today, so I don’t think I’ll be able to record anything. Still a couple of hours left of 2011 here in Norway. I’ll just have to wait and hope the weather gets better.

Instead of this year’s fireworks, I am posting a recording of the fireworks from 2010. New Year’s Eve 2010 was the first time I remembered to bring a recorder to where I spent the evening.. I set up my Zoom H2 at about 11:40 and let it roll for 40 minutes or so. It was a little bit windy, but the Rode deadcat I pulled over the foam windscreen worked pretty well. New Year’s Eve is the only time it’s legal to use fireworks in Norway without special permission, so I’m glad I was able to get a good 20 minutes of ambience.

Equipment: Zoom H2 with Rode dead cat. Location: Finnsnes, Norway

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