Sea dramatics in reverberant sheer cliff chasm, complete with fulmars (upper position)

The waves come surging in, and booming, with sometimes big splashdowns, as they hit the end of a cleft at the back of this impressively reverberant chasm. This viewpoint is a little back from the cliff edge close to the head of the chasm, and so almost directly above the loud booms. Meanwhile once in a while we hear the excitable clucking and cackling of pairs of fulmars on exposed ledges within the chasm.

This is the upper and more landward of two concurrent recordings I made here on 12 March 2014, in Zawn Rinny on the north-west side of the Gwennap Head granite cliff complex (popular among rock climbers), Porthgwarra, Penwith, Cornwall, UK. The recorder was facing squarely across the chasm. The sea sound from within is a little subdued, because none of it is being heard directly because of the shape of the ground there — none of the sea within the chasm being visible from there.

So, what you hear of that from this position is all echo off the other side of the chasm. I'd wanted to peer down at the source of the booms, but concluded that I wasn't quite yet then ready for an act of suicide! The vegetation on the ground there is quite loosely attached, so edging down on that steeper slope below the recorder to the actual cliff edge could well have converted this weirdo into a tasty bit of carrion.

Advisory

High-grade headphones are particularly recommended in order to hear all the detail. Also, because the stereo imaging has been enhanced, that may cause a certain phasiness or phase cancellation points when you listen through certain speakers, whereas that effect doesn't occur when listening through headphones.


The two recordings in progress — the arrows closely pointing to the light grey furry windshield of each recorder; their tripods (thin-legged) aren't visible at this scale of reproduction of the photo. This is a wide-angle view, resulting in perspective distortion, greatly exaggerating the distance between foreground and the nearer recorder, and then de-emphasizing the distance from that to the further recorder.

The same recorder positions from other side of the chasm — Earlier photo (26 November 2013)

Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-M10, with just one furry windshield — a Røde DeadKitten (original, more effective, version) —, and placed on a full-size Zipshot tripod.

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield, and more recent processing with the A1 Stereo Control VST plugin (200% widening).

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