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

Overall rating (4 ratings)
Philip_Goddard

July 1st, 2023

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Sound effects > Natural elements and explosions
Penzance, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom
Cornish coast - Land's End peninsula (Penwith)

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 further down on a rough grassy terrace on the south-east side of the chasm, with open sea sound on left and booms to right. Meanwhile once in a while we hear the excitable clucking and cackling of pairs of fulmars on exposed ledges within the chasm, but they're more distant and reverberant than in the upper recording, and consequently not noticed so much.

This is the lower and more seaward 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. In contrast with the upper recording, here the recorder was facing obliquely across the chasm and landward. From this position we do hear the sea directly on our right, but it gets hidden as it comes in front of the recorder (i.e., down below), so we still don't hear the booms directly, all sea sounds we hear from that part of the chasm being echo. Direct sea sound (mouth of chasm and open sea) is all to left, and the booms are now clearly on the right. We get more sense of each wave surging in than in the upper recording.

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.

This recording taking placeThe 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.

View of recorder positions from other side of chasm
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 mini Zipshot tripod (I regard that as 'midi' rather than mini).

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).

Please remember to give this recording a rating — Thank you!

This recording can be used free of charge, provided that it's not part of a materially profit-making project, and it is properly and clearly attributed. The attribution must give my name (Philip Goddard) and link to https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/693336/

Sound illegal or offensive? Flag it!
Atlantic
bird
birds
booming
booms
chasm
cliff
coast
coast-path
Cornwall
England
field-recording
fulmar
granite
Gwennap-head
natural-soundscape
nature
ocean
Penwith
Porthgwarra
reverberant
reverberation
sea
seabird
sheer-gully
South-West-Coast-Path
UK
waves
Zawn-Rinny

Type

Flac (.flac)

Duration

54:00.269

File size

286.7 MB

Sample rate

44100.0 Hz

Bit depth

16 bit

Channels

Stereo

Comments
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K
Koral.FO

1 year, 4 months ago

The perfect sound I needed.

  1. 81 downloads
  2. 1 comment
Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
You are free to share (to copy, distribute and transmit) and to remix (to adapt and modify) as long as you credit the author of the sound and do not use the sound for commercial purposes. Get attribution text...
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