It is time for you to start going out and capturing your own sounds.
Now, there is still much you do not know. (Like…, so much, including details about microphones, signal chains, gain staging, preamps, analog to digital conversion, how digital audio is stored, differences between lossy and lossless audio, etc.) BUT, I want you to start capturing sounds and playing with them!
And on top of all of this, you are taking this class as an asynchronous, distance-based modality. This means, that we do not have an easy ability to check you out gear like specialized microphones (we just don’t have a mail-based equipment check-out system). As a result, you are going to use your phone/mobile-devices, as well as potentially the inbuilt microphones on your personal computers.
Your mobile-device (typically a smart phone), comes with built-in microphone. This is a compromised device with respect to capturing high-quality recordings (as you will learn more about later this semester). This is because microphones on phones are optimized for voice-based sound/communication. Some optimizations include frequency equalization to emphasize voice, and typically also include reduced frequency range pick-up. However, they are always in your pocket, do not cost you additional money, and are “good enough” to capture a lot of interesting and usable sounds.
When considering an app for recording/capturing audio on your mobile device there are a number of factors that you should consider. Chief among them is the ability to record audio at a high-resolution (so-called, lossless, uncompressed audio), as opposed to compressed audio. The resulting filetype that we are typically looking for is either Waveform audio files (.wav) or AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format, .aiff or .aif). These filetypes will create larger file sizes (compared to .mp3, .aac, .flac, or .m4a) and the audio will not have been compressed in anyway beyond the initial alterations that occur through the analog-to-digital conversion process.
There are two major mobile-phone operating systems (OS), iOS and Android. Both phone operating systems have built-in recording applications. Additionally, these built-in apps should have the ability to select the use of .wav or .aiff filetypes.
-We will be using an app caled Dolby-On.
Its Free.
I will record another video this week demonstrating how I might approach recording a soundwalk with my phone as well as go through settings I would like you to change.