Crashing and thundering breakers by Chapel Porth
<b>Thrilling sound of close breakers, albeit not the largest, crashing and thundering, the recording made from unofficial relatively low exposed contouring clifftop track on the seaward flank of Mulgram Hill, just round to the south-west of Chapel Porth, St Agnes, Cornwall, UK. Recorder was facing out to sea, with the waves coming towards it.</b>
I made this recording on 22 January 2017 during a somewhat extended lunch break on yet another hike from Portreath to Perranporth. When I came to prepare this for upload to Freesound I found that it had an annoying lower bass drumming effect on the left side. I've reduced that with a bit of focused EQ, but not enough to reduce the general lower bass sound too much. Just why this recording had picked up that effect when other recordings of mine from that spot hadn't, I have no idea.
<b>Advisory</b>
Because of the soundscape's big dynamic range, to get a realistic sound level the playing volume needs to be set at some <strong>6dB above</strong> a normal sensible level. In addition, high-grade headphones are strongly recommended in order to hear all the detail and reproduce the very low frequencies reasonably correctly.
<img alt="This recording taking place" src="https://www.broad-horizon-nature.co.uk/170122_recording_sea_on_clifftop_of_mulgram_hill,_chapel_porth,_cornwall.jpg">
<i>This recording taking place.</i>
<b>Techie stuff:</b>
The recorder was a Sony PCM-D100, with two nested furry windshields — the inner being a Movo one <b>of rectangular box shape*</b>, and the outer a custom Windcut one —, and it was placed on a full-size Zipshot tripod.
* <i>Note that I <strong>WARN AGAINST</strong> use of windshields that are of any sort of box shape, for I soon found that they were inherently unsuitable for any decent-quality recording. While no doubt non-box-shaped windshields from Movo would be okay, the presence of relatively flat surfaces, edges and corners creates internal narrow resonance peaks in the treble, which give the latter an abrasive and rather 'screamy' quality, no matter who's made the particular windshields.  When I realized why my recordings had developed that nasty treble quality I had to go back through all recordings made with that dratted box-shaped windshield, and use Voxengo CurveEQ to enable me to precisely neutralize two narrow treble peaks and thus enable the recordings to sound wonderfully natural rather than bafflingly stressful.</i>
Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshields and correction for the D100's weakness in very low bass — and then, later on, the aforementioned remedial EQ measure using Voxengo CurveEQ to remove the two narrow treble peaks kindly added by that rogue model of furry windshield, and also to reduce the aforementioned bass 'drumming' on the left side.
<b>Please remember to give this recording a rating — Thank you! <img alt="" src="https://www.broad-horizon-nature.co.uk/me-icon_wink.gif"></b>
