Some binaural woodland ambience
For my birthday the lovely Mrs Aubrey-Bradshaw had the fine taste to give me a fine pair of Roland CS-10EM Binaural Earphones – these little beauties have the appearance of a pair of slightly oversized earbuds but contain a pair of high quality microphones.
Once inserted, the microphones are placed to be able to hear everything you would otherwise be hearing as it would have been entering your ear canal. This means that any recording made with them contains all of the volume differences, delays and phase distortions your head normally causes that allow you to know where any given sound is coming from. That is to say, all of the extra information, lacking from a normal stereo recording, that allows your brain to form a fully 3D interpretation of your surrounding soundscape. Just listen with headphones to hear true 3D audio.
I needed a little box from ebay to supply the PIP (Plug In Power) to allow me to use my trusty Marantz PMD-620, but most most modern recorders will support them directly. It’s important to note that as the phase information in the audio is essential these clips are recorded and played back from lossless files.
I took myself off into the woods that start at the bottom of our garden and made the following recordings. The photos show what I was looking at while the recording was being made. Enjoy.
First I went to the bottom of the garden and walked through to a clearing where I was sure there would be a nice open ambience.
Next, down to the river. I stood on a high part of the bank overlooking the water and recorded this.
A bit further along. This river dries up during the warmer months and it’s already getting low. I hope to come back and record it while it’s really full this winter. I’ll post the comparison if I can.
Back to the bluebell clearing for this.
This was about a mile and a half downstream of the other river recordings. A couple of streams flow into it just above here so it was somewhat fuller. There’s a very steep road over to the right so I caught a few cars going past.
All text, images and audio copyright Steve Aubrey-Bradshaw 2019
