I was so enamored and immersed with everything going on around me. I wanted to be everywhere. The recordings you are hearing in this album were collected over the months I lived in Eugene, Oregon. Which was not just a city, but an infinitely vast field of sonic expression, of everything I wanted in life at the time of being young and freshly 21. The house behind me was always having huge parties, I could see into their backyard and watch from my window. At night they’d keep me up but I’d set my phone on the windowsill and it hit record.

And that’s what I was doing everywhere, hitting record. I was captivated by the people, conversations, and music surrounding me. I wanted to preserve those moments before they disappeared. wanted to meet every clandestine graffiti artist the musicians, painters, and writers, the Marxists organizing Pride Parades, the Anarchists making DIY HRT in abandoned laundromats. I wanted to preserve their work and their stories.

As all-consuming as Eugene was, it demanded an authenticity I could not afford. The secrets grew and stretched. I met so many wonderful and beautiful people, and befriended a half dozen more, but I could not tell them why I was in Eugene. Sure I could say I was just a student, and that was true, though I was never enrolled in U of O. I could never show them my room or where I lived. I was an autistic kid residing in a facility designed to push you in a direction that my body just didn’t contort to. Trapped between institutional living and a desire to venture to the limits of art and experience, I found myself as a Convoluted Shellfish.

For not being able to pay in veracity, I was forced to pay in exodus. I was expelled from the institution, amputated from all the connections I made. The life I wanted for myself was beyond what the walls of the institution could bear (At the time it was just sneaking out to get drunk and paint whatever blank wall I could find). I have never returned to Eugene, never was able to keep in touch with anyone. All that remains are the recordings. 

https://exodus-o-atmeal.bandcamp.com/album/convoluted-shellfish

Hello, here is another Video of us. We recorded it with the same gear. Have some of you suggestions for us to record in the rain? We are struggling with that, maybe some of you have sughestions? Thank you very much :)

Greetz
Alex from Calm Frames

Hi,

We would like to know your opinion about our field recordings.
We do all our recordings ourselfs.
Here is one of our videos from our YouTube Channel.

Best regards
Alexander

Nothing ilegal of course :) I’ve realised I often prefer ordinary sounds when there’s some distance between me and the source.

A washing machine, dryer, fan or even people moving around a house can sound completely different through a wall or from another room. You lose some detail, but somehow gain a stronger sense of the space around it.

When you’re field recording, do you normally try to get close to the source, or do you ever deliberately record from another room / further away because you prefer the perspective?

This is my current field recording rig, intended mainly for capturing audio for sound effects

• Zoom F3 recorder
• LineAudio CM4 microphone
• Pluggy XLR microphone
• Anker Nano powerbank (5000 mAh)
• Ulanzi MT-44 tripod/selfie-stick
• Ulanzi ST-27 metal phone tripod mount
• Gravity MS U CLMP microphone mount
• LineAudio CMEA shock mount
• SmallRig Mini Ball Head x 2
• ... + velcro straps, rubber bands, XLR cables, thread adapters

My goal: A rig that can be adjusted by height (to be fairly short and tall), can be handheld, easy to move around, has room for a power bank/battery.

Comments:

I only really need to record in mono, but am using two microphones because I've been indecisive as to which overall works the best for SFX recording, the CM4 or Pluggy. So I've been using both. I might decide to keep doing this, giving me two options, or I might finally make a choice and re-rig for a one-microphone set-up.

The two microphones aren't quite aligned, as you can see, using two different mounts. I might get another of the CMEA mounts if it fits the Pluggy too, so they align better.

The rig is a bit heavier than I would have liked, with the ST-27 being made out of metal. It's nice and sturdy, but it feels like the MT-44 tripod is about its limit weight-wise. In fact, I can't extend it fully; if I do, the top, thinnest 'pole' will slowly sink down. But it doesn't lose much height, and I like how easy it is to move, hold, and extend, and I haven't seen any other comparable options.

There doesn't seem to be many good options for mounting powerbanks, and powerbanks themselves often have inconvenient shapes. So velcro (or 'hook and loop') to the rescue! Not pretty, but it works.

I have considered trying out the Røde NT1 Signature Series as the microphone, but how I'd rig that (while keeping it mobile and without killing the tripod) I've no idea!

Would love to hear some thoughts and maybe get some suggestions for part replacements and optional builds.

Hi all! I have recently received the Rode NTG-2 and Zoom H1 XLR courtesy of eBird / Cornell Lab of Ornithology / BirdLife ZA / Big Year of African Sounds and am super excited to get recording with it! I noticed that the NTG-2 comes with a built-in HPF switch - 80kHz @ 12db - and the field recorder can also be set up with a HPF at varying levels. Then, of course, you could also apply a filter in Audacity/a DAW after. Is there any real difference between when in the chain the filters are applied? Does it actually matter (outside of convenience)?

More press for the LAFRC, and field recording in general. It can't be a bad thing!

I sadly won't be able to make it this time, but I had a good time on the last go around. If you're new to field recording, or just want to meet more people into it, I highly recommend it.

I've now been in Romania for 10 days running the field recording workshop and recording a lot of cool wildlife sounds. Autumn is a time of quiet and subtle atmospheres here, perfect conditions for recording discrete animal calls. I managed to get my best recording of an Eagle owl yet, plus loads of other stuff. Can't wait to briefly get back to the UK before I head on to my next adventures in Indonesia and South Africa.

Hello, I just discovered it this subreddit but this is something I’ve always wanted to dive deeper into. I do video production and I’m on sailboats often. I want to capture the sounds, I think people don’t appreciate how mucg noise there is in them and on the water. Wind is of concern as it’s a constant element, how would yall go about combatting wind?

Snagged this lil guy on FB Marketplace for a good price, here’s a little sample of what I recorded on a windy summer day here in Indiana.

Not as good as Clippys for stereo but pretty great for the portability / cost and being able to record dual M/S.

Built a Gladys hydrophone recently and recorded in my overgrown pond. Lots of interesting clicking and buzzing sounds (from aquatic insects i presume). Used a Zoom F3.

captured the sounds walking out of a phish show

I am getting a field recorder, mainly for music performance. My choice, after research, narrow down to Tascam Dr40xp and Zoom H5Studio, whose specs looks similar on the paper (except that the zoom mic can be changed)

I would like to know if the built in mic in Zoom is better than in the Tascam, in terms of audio quality and build quality. The fact that the mic in Zoom made of plastic, make me think twice about how long it would last. Also the preamp noise floor on the paper looks similar, but in the real world is it different?

How would you recommend? Does anybody experience with both units?

Recently started my own project and as I live in a city urban environments are probably gonna be what I record the most. Anything out there that could give me some inspiration?

Hi everybody,

I just received a parabolic stereo microphone from Dodotronic that comes with a 3.5mm jack connector (PIP).

Since it's been expensive I don't really want to waste its potential by connecting it directly to my Sony a7V.

I am looking for a field recorder that has the following specs:

-32 bit audio

-stereo output

-PIP

-3.5mm jack input

-not a zoom h1/4essential

-affordable, ~300€ budget.

I've done some research on Reddit + AI and it seems that zoom F3 + jack to dual XLR PIP connector is my best bet but its gonna be at least 400€ (300 for the zoom, ~100 for the adapter) and on top of that i am not a fan of adapting cables.

Any idea?

Thank you

Hi there! ^-^

I am working on a college project; the main task is to find some menial, trivial or otherwise unnoticed type of 'signal', going unnoticed precisely because of its randomness, abundance/saturation, and thus the brains natural tendency to adaptively pay no mind to it. The next step would then be to gather enough recorded instances of XYZ to turn them into data, analyze them and chart them. The objective isn't to find patterns and then present them as some sort of discovery, it is explicitly to demonstrate how easy it is to..

A. impose arbitrary categories, ones that may be essentially identical, but the fact that one is looking at such a specific, non-specific 'thing' with such discriminating precision gives an invitation to maximize very menial differences.

B. find trends, correlation or causality through sheer volume of data points, whether there is or isn't anything present.

It was rather easy for me to decide that I would just pick.. noise - which essentially IS what was outlined in the task, so this is not exactly a decision . But I thought of very literal, audio(-visual) noise. I live in a very thin-walled and well-populated multi-story building, so sounds of all kinds (bangs, loud thumps, people stepping so hard that I start suspecting a sumo ringer is living above me..) are plentiful and, importantly, generally impersonal and meaningless.

So that's the cause + use case.

What i imagined was running my main Tower PC as a sort of hub that runs 24/7, with multiple microphones permanently on and listening, but only actually recording / saving anything to my hard drive when they do pick up something; this would force me to repeadetly find a noise floor, which might be the biggest problem, since without manual intervention it does not occur to me how I could automate the differentiation between eg. loud thumping (quantifiable, in the most basic sense) and an old fridge beggining to run a cooling cycle, buzzing continously for minutes, then turning quiet again..

I would want these to be very sensitive in the low dB range, even very low volume stuff should be clear and distinguishable when played back later. The microphones should also be directional and narrow at that, since I lack any location to run all this at, other than my own apartment. And seeing as I still want to move around in it, it would be cool if eg. me turning around in Bed didn't instantly completely crowd out everything else.

Advice for what type of setup would work for this is very appreciated, whether it be suggestions for affordable microphones, software solutions or other advice to help me get this thing on the road. Optimally all of the above of course, but anything helps as I have not done anything even remotely similar in my life, you can also dm me if you prefer I don't mind.

I'm totally open for compromise in any area, I am aware that this was more of a wishlist than hard criteria, but I don't know what I don't know so I haven't got a clue of the limitations or possibilities yet. Forgive me if it's a ridiculous proposition as it is standing now T^T

Thanks <3