Recording Underwater Ambiences

Underwater Recording

Recording underwater sounds is not an easy task, precise equipment and solid knowledge are needed.

The recording equipment? You can buy it, simply.

Solid knowledge? You must learn, practice, fail, try again, fail again, try again, it works!

There is very little informations available about underwater recording. This is not a very widespread activity, quite the opposite actually, this is a very specific activity.

Here is a very complete and very useful article entirely dedicated to underwater recording. One of the rare that covers many aspects of this special recording technique and full of explanations.

Add it to your bookmarks, it could come handy at the right time.

For a transition between two music pieces I needed to record the sound of ocean waves crashing continually over the listener so that they eventually become fully submerged in the surf.

Recording the waves from above was simple enough, but from below—this required a special microphone, or at least a special way to keep my condensers from getting ruined.

Information on the creative aspects of underwater recording is sparse and there are a lot of contrary opinions about which method works best.

I did some tests to find out for myself which techniques offer optimal sound quality and then utilized my findings to create the required sound effect.

For anyone that is interested in designing underwater ambiences, this article will provide some interesting insight on underwater recording and related sound design techniques.

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DBlondin