In last weeks workshop we were given an exercise to get us familiar with the Zoom H2N recorders. For this exercise we had to record a formal and then an informal interview about our favourite place on campus to get a bite to eat. In the recording I talk about a cafe in building 80. This recording consists of four seperate recordings which I blended together in Adobe Audition. This is the first time I have used this program and for this tasks I completed the basics. However, in the future I hope to use the program more and learn how to use it in greater detail.

When taking the recordings we had a few problems. First, when recording spot sounds, we found it very difficult to get a recording of one distinct sound. In a cafe there is lots of noise; people talking, coffee machine, people making food, the registers opening and closing, so it was very difficult to get recordings of all this sounds separately. However, because there was so much noise, getting atmosphere recordings was easy.

Another problem we had was finding some where quiet to do the formal interview. These types of interviews do not have loud background noise and you are able to hear the speaker very clearly. However, as previously stated, it was very difficult to find a quiet spot, especially with all the building happening on campus. To try and escape the noise we ended up recording in a stair way, but the problem with that was the eco. Unfortunately due to time restraints we weren’t able to find a better place.

One thing I always try to watch carefully when working with sound are the sound levels. When recording you want to aim for the sound to be recorded between negate 12 and negative 6. Any lower than that and the sound will be to soft, and any louder than negative 6 and it will begin to distort and become unclear. Once this happens, it is impossible to fix the sound. So the levels on the recorder is very important. The second thing I noticed was how the microphone had a 360 degree recording capability. This is partly why we had trouble isolating certain sounds. If we were using a shot gun mic for example, we would have had more success because it has a much more direct recording setup. In fact the longer the mic, the more direct the recording is.

Despite our challenges I believe we did well to get some good recordings which I have mixed together. Within this clip there a four seperate tracks. The primary track is the voice talking about their favourite place to eat on campus. The second track is background noise of the cafe. The two other tracks were of someone handling money and another person closing the cash register. I adjusted the volume of each track and then blended together. This was the first time I used Adobe Audition so I only achieved the very basics. I would have liked to try and make the eco less obvious however given I have no prior experience with the program I was unable to do so.

Over the next week I will be looking at some of the Lynda.com tutorials to gain a better understanding of the program.