How do you listen to these recordings?

[reggind]

It has been quiet here for the last few days so I figured I would elaborate on how I listen to the recordings here...

For me there are at least three types of listening that I do.

One is very casual. This is like the TV that is turned down low in the background as I am typing now. If I hear anything interesting I might look up, but for the most part it is just acoustic fodder.

The vast majority of the files here get a focused casual listen. This generally means headphones, but I listen start to end, and often while I am doing something else. If the file piques my interest, it will get a critical listen, which is the last class... And the one I want to elaborate on a bit.

I have found that critical listening is a skill, and many of the aspects you can practice listening to these recordings have value in real life listening situations.

So, a critical listening. The first thing I do is turn the TV all the way down and do anything else that I need to do to get the house quiet. Turn fans and A/C units off, close windows. Make the place as quiet as I can get it.

Next I select headphone, or more specifically ear buds. I have a bunch of sets, from and expensive set that I really like, to pairs from the $1 store that are not too bad if the take the time to EQ them properly. One of the first things I look at with earbuds is for anything that projects downward out of the backs of them. That is a showstopper for me. I want to shove those babies deep into my ear. I also rotate them so the body of them fits more in line with my ear canal. This typically puts them in more of an upside down configuration. I kow this sound silly, but don't knock it until you have tried it. At this point in time the world should be dead quiet.

Next I will set up my player. For the $1 store earbuds I use foobar 2000 and I literally have 4 different IIR filters set up to EQ them. I like many of the effects in Audacity better, but I have the EQ worked out for those phones in foobar. I also generally turn on the EBUR128 normalizer. This is a compressor. Often times I will also use one more IIR filter to rapidly cut any bass under about 200Hz. This gets rid of a lot of rumble. The last thing I do is I set up the keyboard shortcuts so the spacebar rewinds the file either one or five seconds.

Now I start the file and turn the volume up just a wee tad over what I normally would. Now comes the zen part. Put your hand on the space bar so you can find it. Close your eyes and relax. Let your respiration slow down. Breath shallowly. Let your heart rate slow up. Now start to listen. Let the sound take over your entire world. If you think you hear anything at all, let your finger tap the space bar and wind it back a wee bit and listen again. Think about what you are hearing, both in terms of the programming and what might improve it. You might want to go back and tweak your EQ a bit or add more.

Many recordings are made in rooms with hard walls. Sound waves will bounce back and forth between the walls. There is one frequency that has a wave that is the exact length of the distance between the walls, and this one frequency will tend to ring and reverberate. Clap your hands in a home stairway and you will generally get a very exaggerated version of this. Consider using a parametric EQ where you can vary the frequency to the exact offending frequency, the amount to cut that frequency by, and the Q of the filter, or the range of adjacent frequencies that will also be effected. Generally a parametric EQ channel is better than a full octave or even a third octave graphic for this, as you can precisely tune both the center frequency and the Q as needed.

Make one change at a time, attack one dragon per pass and go back and forth until you are happy with the changes. And than re-listen. After a few passes you will start to notice little things you missed the previous pass. Little bits of speech that are too low to hear normally, small grunts and gasps. Noises from bodies moving around on the blankets etc.

Overall I like the EBUR128 normalizer quite a lot, but sometimes a loud sound like the mic being moved will cause it to turn the gain way down and it can take up to a few seconds to recover. I have found that sometimes going forward and than backing up will make it average in different levels and react differently. In some cases I have toyed with the idea of setting up a soft limiter and just digitally cranking the gain up. The limiter will keep it from distorting (rolling over) and gain would be constant but there would be a lot of blur and clipping noise. Could your ear pick out the quiet it in that? I dunno. Try it.

The whole idea is to make the sound your entire world, and just concentrate on it, and what may make it better. When you find an interesting bit to be able to quickly reply it agian and agian until you can identify it or give up for that pass.

And as I said before some of these skills can help you in real life. If you are in a situation where you want to listen, being able to tune in and be very aware of your surroundings and where the sound is coming from and where the noises are. Which of then can be avoided (turn off the A/C, unplug the fridge etc). Don't fall for your own breathing, and don't get let our heartbeat or respiration get so out of control it masks what you are listening to. These are all good things to be able to do in case you hear something "live".

If you want a fun file to play with, try the hot brunette series. There are lots of little bits in there. There is one nice "Harder" in there that I think most people have missed. See if you can find it.