i’d say the frequency ranges differ between all those devices, although they overlap somewhere.
the elektrosluch and the detektor need to be close to the source(s) being investigated. the elektrosluch has two coils for EMF detection and has a stereo output. the detektor has one coil for EMF signals and an antenna for higher frequency signals. it has two minijack outputs, one being the two mono signals summed, the other output gives you the two sources separated one per channel.
the priezor picks up stuff even from the atmosphere but, being passive, it needs HUGE gain/amplification, really. if you have something like a sound-devices, with clean preamps and 65db of gain, you’re set.
the small telephone pick-up is, i think, the same kind of coil as the elektrosluch and the detektor but is passive. the same principle of taking a guitar pick-up and wiring it to a jack plug.
the soma ether also picks up stuff from a distance no problem, but without the need of cranking the gain of your recording device (similar to elektrosluch and detektor, but with a wider freq.reange). i got it a month ago or so but i didn’t had yet the time to test it extensively.
This is a recording I made with my mikroUši Pro’s and the MixPre-6. I stood beneath a large bridge and the cars passing overhead made quite a pronounced and dramatic thumping sound as they drove across a join in the road. I thought it was quite a neat atmosphere.
I just found a reference to this blog post and thought it might be of great interest for anyone interested in under-water recording but not knowing what’s going on or why the results can be patchy at times…
Sad to see it go, but you had a good run.
I had to google what Pickle Ball was/is but I listened and now I feel like I’ve experienced it too
Amazing; never heard of pickle ball either and as such had never heard this sound before - really cool and following.
Ambeo sounds great, cool recording!
Thanks for a great article. I have a couple of Jez Riley French’s hydrophones. Great for recording the dogs jumping in the swimming pool. For phantom power I run them (the stereo hydrophones, not the dogs) through this matchbook-sized Pulp Logic phantom power/pre-amp.
They are great mics! That said I run mine without Phantom power using the impedance converters Mr. French sells. I cannot tell a difference in sound and it saves some battery.
These impedance converters you mention are intriguing. A quick google search didn’t yield anything. Any suggestions on where I might find such a thing? I’m always open to finding a new/easier way to do things.
Thanks so much. Probably should have known that already since I have his hydrophones.
No worries, I do remember them saying what they are with a printed label, (maybe made from Hosa?) but as I am on vacation now I can’t check it. Also it is nice to support someone who makes great stuff like Jez by buying them from him 
I’d like to start using field recordings in my music, and I could use some ideas! I have a cheap zoom recorder with decent quality and plan on working with them in my ER-301. Apologies if this has been asked before…
- Which types of field recordings do you use?
- How do you use them, including how do you process them, do you use to extract triggers (envelope followers).
- How would you describe their “role” in the music (atmosphere, rhythmic, loops, or…)?
- Music I should listen to for inspiration, including your tracks?
There’s an existing thread about field recording with a lot of good information:
https://llllllll.co/t/field-recording/4644
Yeah, I saw that, but it seems very centered around which recorder (aptly tagged “equipment”), I was hoping for more “process” oriented input.
I’ll go through that thread again, though, maybe I missed something…
I’ve thought abt having a process field recording thread before for about the same reason. huge part of my personal practice but I pretty much just use a zoom & don’t care much about quality, so not super drawn to the other thread but also haven’t scrolled through much.
anyway, re: process a huge eye opener for me was pitching down anywhere between 0.5 - 0.125 and wide bandpass filtering, so your highs become your lows and everything is much slower. works well for busy noisy recordings you might not end up using otherwise.
Thanks! That’s exactly those kind of starting points I was hoping for! Will try this out immediately!
classic technique.
yeah playback speed and eq/filtering is gonna quickly bring out new elements, anything that affects perception of the material. i mostly use my v1 microgranny to playback mildly treated field recs, slowed down ofc, and let the weird formatting for that device do the rest.
heavy fft-based eq’s are good for finding crazy narrow bands (i’ve got a buried work using field recs from costa rica where the soundfield is insanely dense) - i’ve still got a functional NI spektral delay that is always great for turning things into new things.
delay is a little static but if you have any novel time based effects on hand (may i rec sonic charge permut8 for this), give it a shot.
one technique I had quite a bit of fun with was quantising field recordings in Ableton Live using the “beats” algorithm and then playing around with the Transient Envelope setting. That way you can transform the field recording into percussion sounds.