Yet More Water Recordings

Location
Noosa Queensland
Equipment
Roland R09
and a zip lock bag

Moving back to Melbourne next week means we don’t have much time left to enjoy the beach, and as Anna has nearly finished her studies for the year we thought we’d head down the beach for a swim. I thought I would try one last time to do some underwater recording. I’ve decided the waterproof bag is a better choice than the zip lock bag as the type of plastic produces less noise when it moves. The main issue I had last time was that the sound of the waves moving was just way too loud even with the input set to the absolute lowest level. This time I tried to stay in much calmer water and limit my movements to slow and consistent moves. The other issue was if the unit was taken too deep then there seemed to be very little to record. The movement of water and waves were the main things to capture, but also the sounds that maxed out the unit the most.

Today I tried to keep the unit just below the surface of the water to try and capture the waves without peaking. Another difficult aspect is that there is no way for me to monitor what is being recorded until I get home and upload the files to my laptop. This time was much more successful than my previous attempts. As a general rule when recording sound underwater, place the recording device much further from the sound source than you would expect to. Splashes and general body movement can be captured quite well, but if the unit is too close it will peak every time. This time about 25% of the material I recorded was useful which I was pretty happy with. I might do some more tests in the future in a normal swimming pool to see what can be achieved there.

Noosa Beach