There is an immense difference between recording indoors and outdoors using any microphone. Indoor recordings usually provide a quieter and calm recording allowing the microphone to pick up only the sounds that are loudest and closer to the microphone, which is why indoor recordings are best to use for such purposes as recording an audio track or specific sound effect. Outdoor recordings are opposite to the silent and carm recording that indoor recording provides, as their a lot more strident and busy. Outdoor recordings are much more useful if you were looking for a range of different sounds as the outdoor tend to have a larger variety of sound than the indoors.
Indoor Recordings
As part of the indoor recording experiment (in groups of two) we re-enacted a radio interview of a celebrity of our choice using a zoom H2 microphone. The location we recorded our interview in was a spacious hallway. The hallway was enclosed with a lot of doors and parting walls, the hallway was constructed in a triangular shape, making it long in length and short in width, the hallway was also fairly empty, with only one coffee table placed against the wall, there was hardly any furniture within.
Due to the fact that this recording was done in a hallway a lot of the background noises consisted of footsteps and shutting doors as people walk past us as we were recording, but in general it was silent, but if you listen to the recording, you can hear other sound effects as flickering lights and running radiators but all these background sounds were in very low frequency compared to the vocals of the interview that we created, which were in impeccably high frequency.
Our vocals were much louder and clearer to hear than the other background noises because we were closer to the microphone. Distance between the microphone and audio really makes a difference to the frequency of the sound the audio makes. Our vocals were sometimes piercingly loud and irritated to the ear because we were close the microphone, plus the volume of our voices would rise in some parts, which increased the frequency of our voices even more.
Though our voices were clear to hear because we were closer to the H2, there were still those really high-pitched loud noises such as doors opening and shutting and footsteps (which got louder as the people walking past got closer to the H2) that still managed to be heard and slightly obstruct our vocals, but these sounds didn’t last to long and weren’t to close so they didn’t have too much of a distracting effect.
As the recording of the interview was done indoors, there was hardly any wind noise, though some wind would enter the room (or even be created) when the doors opened and closed. There were however some mechanical sounds during the handling the H2, which interrupted the playback of our recording.
For the indoor recording we were inside a building, but the sound changed depending on what we came closer to in the course of recording, when we came closer to the door the sound from the recording became quitter and when we came closer to the wall or the floor it got louder, due to the appearance of the echo, the recording sounded better when we placed it nearer to the wall or to the floor this is because there was more of an echo, which emphasised the clarity of our voice.
The headphones were very efficient and useful during the course of creating this interview, because they allowed us hear the interview during playback and make the changes that were necessary, for example, we would record the interview, use the headphone to listen back, and if the recording contained to much interference with our vocals we would delete that recording and make a new one, not only that, they also allowed us to control and monitor the projection of the sound (whether certain sounds needed to be quieter and louder).
There are a few improvements I could have made to the equipment; such as, having two microphones for the interview (this would have improved the clarity for each voice), a stand for the microphones (this would mean that we don’t have to hand hold the microphone so it wouldn’t contain too much interference) and a windshield (this would reduce the obstructive background noises such as the doors.
Outdoor Recordings
For the outdoor recording, we recorded in two different locations; the first one was by the roadside of Deansfield and the second location was by the woods in Rotherfield of the college site. When we recorded in the woods we stood in complete silence by the loudest part of the woods and recorded the surroundings then we got someone to crush leaves with their feet, when we recorded by the road, we held the zoom by the road and recorded cars as they drove past.
The location of the woods was very enclosed and busy; there were a lot of trees (tall and short), stumps, bushes and fallen leaves covering the floor, there were also birds and squirrels roaming the area. The roadside on the other hand was very spacious and concrete full, there wasn’t a lot of surrounding but it was far busier as it had people walking by and cars driving by fast.
In the woods there was a larger variety of sound, though most of them were low frequency. In the recording you could hear the trees rustling as the wind past by, this is due to the fact the trees are large and have the highest quantity. You could hear the animals such as birds being picked up by the H2; this is because they were close to the zoom and are the highest pitched sound. But the highest frequency sound in the woods were the leave, due to the fact that they were closest to the zoom and the friction between our feet and the zoom was loud and fast. On the roadside, the highest frequency sounds were the cars driving past (the cars had an increasing volume effect as they got closer and further from the H2), but there were other sounds in the background such as vocals and footsteps of people walking past.
In the outdoor recordings, we didn’t have to record any dialogue, so there was no obtrusive sound to the dialogue, though on the road some sound distracted the clarity of others, for example, if a car drove past at the same time as some walking behind and talking, both those sound would clash with each other and create an irritating and imprecise sound.
In the woods there was a lot of wind noise. The wind sound frequency would be increased as the wind passed the trees, making them moves and leaves clash and this sound became extremely evident on the H2, on the roadside the wind was created by the moving care. As a car would drive past there would be wind rushing past the zoom with was another high frequency sound.
For both recordings I wasn’t near any buildings, but there was defiantly a change of sound between the woods and the road. Being in the wood provided a much more silent and carm recording result, as the high trees blocked out the busy streets and surroundings. But the closer we got the road the nosier and busier it was, which made it hard to focus on certain sounds as the zoom had to pick up a lot of different sounds at once.
The headphone were not as useful for the indoors recording as the outdoors recording, because the sound we were recording were natural and un rehearsed or didn’t need to be changed or edited. And since we could hear the sound as it is being recorded, the headphone just allowed you to confirm what you already heard.
The improvements I would make to the equipment we used for outdoor recording would be using a microphone stand, which would allow us to position the microphone exactly to the sound we are trying to record. And having a microphone windshield would also help when we want to hear other sounds besides the uncontrollable wind, I would also use a preamp by doing this I would be able to control the sounds that the H2 was picking up. Another thing that I would commence would be to stand further away from the microphone so that sounds such as hearing were not caught during the recording process.
