This recording was made on 19th November 2012 during my lunch break on a hike on the coast path from Portreath to Perranporth, Cornwall, UK. It is a very standard sound of surf on a sandy beach. I recorded it from the clifftop on the seaward side of the rather craggy prominence on the south-south-west side of Chapel Porth. Before I got this far along the coastline the breaking surf was sounding really impressive, with very deep 'thundering' sounds from the individual waves breaking, but here it is less impressive because the tide was quite well out and the 'action' was thus rather distant from me - so the individual thunderings tend to be rather lost in the general hiss of the nearer expanse of de-frothing sea.

The exact placing of the recorder was well down on the seaward side of the prominence, immediately beside a fairly exposed narrow track that contours the very steep cliff slope, giving an adventurous-feeling unofficial route for descending to Chapel Porth. It was handy on this particular day also because it was sheltered from the stiff southerly breeze.

The odd aeroplane came over during this recording, and on balance I chose not to cut those bits out, for they give a balancing sort-of 'punctuation' to the otherwise rather unvaried sound, and those intrusions are not all that strong and are very brief.

As usual for my natural soundscape recordings with a significant sea or wind component, only really good hi-fi speakers or headphones with an extended and reasonably flat bass response could do this recording real justice, for there is a considerable very low frequency component in the sound, which would tend to be either boomy or more or less inaudible in normal speaker systems. Please also note that the volume level of this recording has been carefully adjusted for listening purposes, and ALL my recordings so far are meant to be listened to with a volume setting that would give a realistic level for playback of CLASSICAL music (a large but not exceptional symphony orchestra). If you have the right volume setting, you should not need to change that setting from one recording of mine to another.

Recording made with a Sony PCM-M10 on a Hama mini-tripod, using the built-in microphones covered with a Rycote Mini Windjammer. I have used a graphic EQ profile in WavePad to compensate for the slight muffling of the sound caused by the Windjammer. The photo below was taken while this recording was being made.

**Please remember to give this recording a rating! **

Comments

• 
  1jmorrisoncafe392 4 months, 1 week ago

  Hi Phil,

  The recording may be very standard, but you seem to hold
  your recording of the Atlantic close to your heart. Nice,
  ambient sound from the England, thanks.

  I just made a copy of another clip of the North Coast,
  very similar to yours. I want at least one more recording
  of either WAV or FLAC. The criticism I've read of FLAC
  is in my opinion based on laboratory research instead
  of the natural or non-remixed recording. Anyway, the
  purpose of having several uncompressed samples of
  basically the same subject is to check the quality of
  my hearing. At 52, my hearing is shot. My idea is that
  if you and others made recordings you believe are "pure"
  then I should be able to discern differences between
  the ocean and enviroment in each. Since they were made
  in different locations under different weather conditions.

  .