Pack: Home Ambience Journal

Documenting the ambiance of my home from a couple of interior and exterior listening positions, over time under different environmental conditions.

The location is the Central Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, in the USA. Somerville is a dense little city with mostly 3-story houses packed closely together... dense by USA standards, at least. This affects the way sound travels. My location is also on the side of a hill that overlooks the northern part of town and beyond, so there's a combination of near and far sound.

All recordings are made with a Sony PCM-D50 recorder. In most cases, I am using the 120-degree "wide" microphone pattern, and I'll note when this is not the case.

I am attempting to record all of these (interior and exterior) at the same recording level, so that it's possible to perceive the relative loudness of various moments when comparing files and examining how the environment changes over time. The recording level is "6" on the Sony PCM-D50.

The only processing that I apply is a high-pass filter in some recordings, mostly exterior ones, in order to reduce wind noise and vibrations that get amplified by the tripod and wooden structure that it sits on. At the moment it seems like a good idea because I'm trying to walk a line between providing an objective listening experience, and making something that's useful in a mixing situation where you don't want the extra low-frequency energy that doesn't add anything significant to the perception of the event. I could change my mind about this.

The notes above are current as of 2025-05-10.