Tag Archives: binaural recording

Earth

Crickets And Grasshoppers Relaxing Sounds For Your Mind

Leave a comment

If you didn’t know already, crickets and grasshoppers are not the same insect- though they do share a distant common ancestor from somewhere back in time.

How can you tell them apart?

For one thing, grasshoppers have short antennae whereas crickets have long antennae. Considering that crickets are active at night, in the dark- it makes sense for them to have “supercharged” antennae.

Oh but the sound.

It’s amazing to know that together and in unison, thousands upon thousands of orthopterans (the common order that is shared by crickets and katydids,  grasshoppers and locusts) can create a huge amount of sound from nothing more than, in the case of grasshoppers: rubbing their hind legs against their forelimbs or in the case of crickets: rubbing their fore wings together.  Judging by the number of nature recordings ready for streaming,  many of us are enjoying these sounds as a soothing treatment to help us unwind, relax and fall asleep.  For the Silo, Jarrod Barker.

Cricket or grasshopper? What do you think? photo: Dixie Greenwood
Cricket or grasshopper? What do you think? photo: Dixie Greenwood

From the nature recordist NeCubFlyer:

“I’ve been recording high quality nature sounds for over 26 years for my own personal use. When I first started, nature recordings didn’t exist and when these types of recordings finally hit the market, they were so overly compressed & attenuated it didn’t even remotely sound natural!

Throughout some recordings you may find sounds that are man made.

All of my recordings are captured in nature as it happens. None of my recordings have been “Computer Generated” or are short segments looped together. I have traveled to some of the most remote areas of the US to capture my nature sounds only to find jets flying overhead or a train off in the distance blowing its horn. It is virtually impossible to capture a clean recording without the “Hand of Man” being heard. To remove these sounds would take some serious computer manipulation and destroy the integrally of the recording! Being a purest… what you hear is what you get… just like the real world.

If you enjoy these soothing sounds, please   visit my site  and help show your support…I hope you enjoy this beautiful recording as much as I have!!!”

Sci-Tech

Gaming Music Production And Sound Design Focusing On 3D 360 Spatiality

Leave a comment

Zylia, the Poland-based manufacturer of audio recording technologies, will host a workshop on 3D/360 music production and sound design during GameSoundCon 2018, today and tomorrow at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Zylia co-founder and CTO Tomasz Żernicki will lead the workshop, focusing on the use of third-order Ambisonics spherical microphone arrays, such as that in the innovative new ZYLIA ZM-1, to capture a 3D full-sphere audio scene for gaming or ambient sound production.

“Use of a spherical microphone array to enable single-device capture of a full sound scene with high spatial resolution is a recent and significant advance in audio recording technology — and one that opens the door to 3D audio production opportunities for both professionals and amateurs,” said Żernicki. “We’re excited to be sharing this technology with GameSoundCon 2018 attendees and to be providing them with useful techniques for capturing 3D sound in Ambisonics format and for working with live sound in VR applications.”

During the Zylia GameSoundCon workshop, Żernicki will demonstrate how just one spherical microphone array can record an entire 3D sound scene and then separate the recording’s individual sound sources for multitrack editing in post production. The numerous physical microphone capsules within the spherical array effectively enable users to work with software-controlled virtual microphones with adjustable direction and spatial characteristics. By isolating particular sounds, cutting out interesting areas of the sound space, and zooming in on particular sound objects, this kind of sound representation allows for soundscape modification in post production and simplifies ambient or Foley sound preparation.5 speaker binaural audio setup

Żernicki will explain how sound recorded by third-order Ambisonics spherical microphone array can be converted into the Ambisonics format and used in 360-degree movies — particularly virtual reality content on Facebook 360, YouTube 360, or game engines — in which listeners can rotate the whole sound scene. He also will discuss usage of 360 sound with the combination of binaural or surround loudspeaker reproduction.

As an audio expert, Żernicki focuses his professional interest on 360/VR music production, spatial sound processing, and recording. He holds doctorates in electrical and electronic engineering, and he takes an active role in the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) standardization committee. He also has made significant contributions to audio compression standards such as MPEG-D USAC and MPEG-H 3D Audio.AES Conference for Augmented Reality Audio

GameSoundCon is dedicated to game music, sound design, and virtual reality audio. Throughout the conference, Żernicki and other Zylia experts will be on hand to discuss 3D/360 sound applications, as well as the company’s ZYLIA ZM-1 spherical microphone array, ZYLIA Studio PRO VST/AU plugin, and ZYLIA Ambisonics Converter.

Supplemental- Mark Mothersbaugh (DEVO) on making music for games.