Ancient sound - French hotel
Posted: 29 Dec 2021 17:44
Hi all,
I've found this site a very short time ago and have been enjoying the content provided by others, so I decided to share what little I've been able to record myself.
I've not had the chance to get much over the time, or it was much too faint to record, except for this noticeable exception, a long while ago (2015!). The only recording device I had at that time was a very basic Galaxy S2 (yes, I'm not missing a digit at the end), so the original sound was not extraordinary, but I managed to improve it drastically via a limited amount of “Noise reduction” (broad application kills any realism in the sound) and “DeReverb” in Adobe Audition after adjusting the volume up. I then simply cut the little noise I made so the result is not bothered by out-of-context sounds.
As I’m talking about context, let me give some. I had this training over a February weekend in 2015, somewhere in France. I was exhausted and just came back straight to the hotel. I can recall seeing a couple enter the room next to mine when I arrived, but my almost 7-year-old memory can’t recall what they looked like, except maybe that they were maybe somewhere between 35 and 50. I can’t be more precise, sorry. I then dropped my bag and went to the hotel restaurant for a quick chew and an early night as the training started early the next day. I came back to my room at about 9PM and after a short while, I remember thinking “oh, sh*t, I won’t be able to sleep, I have someone noisy in the next room” as they were talking and I’m a light sleeper. Then, I heard more. I did not immediately understand what it was all about (I’ll stick to my tiredness excuse to my dying day).
It’s probably my tiredness and my beginner’s luck (that’s the very first recording I ever tried) that allowed me to have my best idea, that rendered the end result useable. When I understood what they were doing, I had to record it, but what I hate in the capacity (or lack thereof) of the phones when used for recording is that each time you touch or move them, it creates an awful noise that covers the signal and kills my mood when I listen to it. So, I had to place it right from the get-go and not touch it anymore. That’s when I saw that there were those double doors between the couple’s room and mine. You know, the type of back-to-back doors with no handle between the two doors so each room can only open the door on its side, so parents can be close to their children but still have some privacy. I shut down the lights and very slowly opened the door on my side and laid the phone down on the ground just shy of touching their door, millimeters (sorry, I’m French, so I can’t speak antiquated imperial measurements. Funny enough that the only country still using those ancient imperial measurements is the one calling itself the first modern democracy, it never ends to amaze me. Especially now that all imperial units are defined… from the metric system
) from the gap below the door. In effect, almost in their room.
Their little game lasted for almost ONE AND A HALF HOUR
. OK, they were not very loud most of the time, but let’s say I did not sleep as early as I imagined I would! I’ll let you judge.
Please excuse me if I made any grammatical error. As I wrote earlier, English is not my native language.
Bsjftgs
I've found this site a very short time ago and have been enjoying the content provided by others, so I decided to share what little I've been able to record myself.
I've not had the chance to get much over the time, or it was much too faint to record, except for this noticeable exception, a long while ago (2015!). The only recording device I had at that time was a very basic Galaxy S2 (yes, I'm not missing a digit at the end), so the original sound was not extraordinary, but I managed to improve it drastically via a limited amount of “Noise reduction” (broad application kills any realism in the sound) and “DeReverb” in Adobe Audition after adjusting the volume up. I then simply cut the little noise I made so the result is not bothered by out-of-context sounds.
As I’m talking about context, let me give some. I had this training over a February weekend in 2015, somewhere in France. I was exhausted and just came back straight to the hotel. I can recall seeing a couple enter the room next to mine when I arrived, but my almost 7-year-old memory can’t recall what they looked like, except maybe that they were maybe somewhere between 35 and 50. I can’t be more precise, sorry. I then dropped my bag and went to the hotel restaurant for a quick chew and an early night as the training started early the next day. I came back to my room at about 9PM and after a short while, I remember thinking “oh, sh*t, I won’t be able to sleep, I have someone noisy in the next room” as they were talking and I’m a light sleeper. Then, I heard more. I did not immediately understand what it was all about (I’ll stick to my tiredness excuse to my dying day).
It’s probably my tiredness and my beginner’s luck (that’s the very first recording I ever tried) that allowed me to have my best idea, that rendered the end result useable. When I understood what they were doing, I had to record it, but what I hate in the capacity (or lack thereof) of the phones when used for recording is that each time you touch or move them, it creates an awful noise that covers the signal and kills my mood when I listen to it. So, I had to place it right from the get-go and not touch it anymore. That’s when I saw that there were those double doors between the couple’s room and mine. You know, the type of back-to-back doors with no handle between the two doors so each room can only open the door on its side, so parents can be close to their children but still have some privacy. I shut down the lights and very slowly opened the door on my side and laid the phone down on the ground just shy of touching their door, millimeters (sorry, I’m French, so I can’t speak antiquated imperial measurements. Funny enough that the only country still using those ancient imperial measurements is the one calling itself the first modern democracy, it never ends to amaze me. Especially now that all imperial units are defined… from the metric system
) from the gap below the door. In effect, almost in their room.Their little game lasted for almost ONE AND A HALF HOUR
. OK, they were not very loud most of the time, but let’s say I did not sleep as early as I imagined I would! I’ll let you judge.Please excuse me if I made any grammatical error. As I wrote earlier, English is not my native language.
Bsjftgs
. I really hate it when you can hear more of the operator moving the recorder around than of the action. I'd rather have a consistently "less perfect" sound than clicks, brushes and all. At least, consistent white noise can be filtered out to some extent, although too much filtering leads to metallic telephon-like sounds due to the removal of harmonics in the higher frequencies. Balance is everything 
!