Making an Immersive Recording

Soundscapes Making an Immersive Recording

Ambience: Dawn Chorus, Mariposa Grove Yosemite

Get your headset on. There’s some immersive audio in this program. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Dugan: The dawn chorus is the most beautiful part of the soundscape recording; so you got to get that.

For the past twenty years, Dan Dugan has been taking audio portraits soundscape recordings – of national parks, in part to monitor the species there. But making this type of recording is no easy task.

Dugan: To give it scientific credibility, I follow a fixed protocol that I do the same in every place. I’ll go to the location in the late afternoon or the middle afternoon, and look around and find a place where I think I want to make my recordings and set up my equipment. I’ll record in the evening; there’s often some bird activity around the end of the day. I’ll setup a camp, and so I’ll stay there with my equipment, about 80 feet off, so that my personal noises don’t get in the recording. And then during the night, I’ll stand by to record anything that might happen, like wind, owls, coyotes, things like that during the night.
And then in the morning starting at nautical twilight, which is just the very crack of dawn, I’ll record 90 minutes of what will be the dawn chorus, which is when all the birds wake up and sing before they go out to forage for breakfast.

Thanks to Dan Dugan and the Nature Sounds Society. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. You can hear this and previous programs on our podcast.

Making an Immersive Recording

Get your headset on!
Air Date:10/24/2017
Scientist:
Transcript:

Soundscapes Making an Immersive Recording

Ambience: Dawn Chorus, Mariposa Grove Yosemite

Get your headset on. There's some immersive audio in this program. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Dugan: The dawn chorus is the most beautiful part of the soundscape recording; so you got to get that.

For the past twenty years, Dan Dugan has been taking audio portraits soundscape recordings - of national parks, in part to monitor the species there. But making this type of recording is no easy task.

Dugan: To give it scientific credibility, I follow a fixed protocol that I do the same in every place. I'll go to the location in the late afternoon or the middle afternoon, and look around and find a place where I think I want to make my recordings and set up my equipment. I'll record in the evening; there's often some bird activity around the end of the day. I'll setup a camp, and so I'll stay there with my equipment, about 80 feet off, so that my personal noises don't get in the recording. And then during the night, I'll stand by to record anything that might happen, like wind, owls, coyotes, things like that during the night.
And then in the morning starting at nautical twilight, which is just the very crack of dawn, I'll record 90 minutes of what will be the dawn chorus, which is when all the birds wake up and sing before they go out to forage for breakfast.

Thanks to Dan Dugan and the Nature Sounds Society. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. You can hear this and previous programs on our podcast.