Here is my recording of New Year’s 2018 featuring the sounds of the celebration at midnight at my home in Seattle. The recording starts at about 11:55 PM, December 31st, 2017 and ends at about 12:17 AM, January 1st, 2018. Along with an inexpensive Dell laptop computer, I used VSTHost with LoudMax as a VST plug-in. A little editing, normalizing and noise reduction was performed with iZotope RX6. Pictured below are the microphones, adapter cables, and recording interface. One microphone was placed outside at the front of my house, facing west, and the other just outside on my back deck, facing east. I recommend listening on headphones for the full effect.
Inexpensive electret condenser microphones
Covered with tissue paper
Phantom power to electret plug-in power adapters by Naiant Studio
What is an electret microphone?
Mackie Onyx Blackjack recording interface
Grounded metal window frame to prevent AC hum from nearby power lines from being induced on west facing microphone
New Year’s Far Rockaway, Queens, New York
This was captured from an online open microphone from approximately 11:55 PM, December 31st, 2017 to about 12:14 AM, Eastern Standard Time, January 1st, 2018. This micophone seemed to be plagued with a lot of rumbling wind noise with clicks. I used a couple of passes of declick, and then phase rotation and normalization to -.3 dB in iZotope RX6. The sound is much improved, although the volume drops every time there’s a a gust of wind, and a compressor reduces the gain.
6 users commented on " New Year's 2018 "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackLovely. Was assuming/hoping we’d have these to add to the archive.
I gather you’ve been busy elsewhere of late. Don’t forget the faithful few you have here. We miss you!
I just listened. Very nice (and festive, too)! It’s a great idea; that kind of stereo separation must have isolated local outdoor sounds to each channel while allowing stereo recording of the loud, distant, outdoor sounds and the lower-volume indoor sounds. I would be curious to hear the results of some phase-canceled mixes, considering the unusual stereo separation. Of course, now, you could probably drop this recording into Melodyne and pluck out any sound you like. I hear many potential percussive samples in there!
Thank you, Ed. Oh, I don’t know if my modest recording would show anything special in a program like Melodyne. Remember these are 99 cent microphones and I did quite a lot of noise reduction to get it to sound as well as it did. However, the microphones were separated by the width of my house, I’m guessing about 60 feet or so.
Leona, I haven’t forgotten about the blog. I hope to bring some posts over from FaceBook.
Very cool. The recorded audio sounds surprisingly natural, considering the separation between microphones — almost like some binaural recording experiments I’ve done in the past. May I ask what sort of cable you used for the outdoor runs? It looks like some bulk mic cable I bought at RadioShack years ago. I do wonder if placing a simple preamp/balanced line driver at each mic might help with the AC hum pickup issue?
Ben, AC hum is minimal because of the use of the phantom power to electret plug-in power adapters from Naiant Studio. See the link under the picture. Most of the cable length is balanced XLR. Grounding the metal window frame also helped.