After many years of planning, this past August I traveled to a secluded spot on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. One of my main goals while there was to capture the sound of the surf, and to use various mics and so forth to see what I liked best.

I took with me my newest toy: a Marantz PMD660 solid state recorder. This particular unit being newer than Marantz's earlier release of the product, I am told, has fairly good pre-amps. In any case, I had a lot of fun with it. I also dragged along some mics: AT4050/cm5, Behringer measurement mics (super el-cheapos, but very functional), AT822 (I still think the 822 is a fantastic value) and a pair of AE5100s, which I like for some purposes. They are a little bright for me. Maybe I am a little too used to the 4050s.

And so I can now present some results.

Track 1 was made with the Behringer mics, located at least 50 yards from the surf. The surf was quite strong, too. Interestingly, it isn't all that easy to tell how far away the mics are. You can hear some birds singing, maybe even some hummingbirds, and locusts as well. You might hear some thumping. That is me walking across the deck. In later sessions, I dug out some shock mounts to reduce that. All of the recordings were made with the mics in ORTF spacing, with the exception of the AT822, which is a single-unit stereo mic, and has the capsules fixed in an X-Y position. (Which, generally, I am not fond of unless used for close work.) The stereo image in this track is lacking a little for sure, because the Behringer mics are omnidirectionals, and are in an ORTF arrangement! That is something that virtually all audio engineers will tell you is completely incorrect, but - what the heck, I was experimenting.

TRACK_01_STRONG_SURF_16-33.ogg, vorbis encoded, 17.4MB, 16:09

Track 2 was made with the AT822, located about 50 yards or more from the rather strong surf. The 822 has a few very noticable peaks in the treble. I am not sure if it is a help or not. In any case, it's easy to reduce in post production. I left it untouched here. Again, this sounds a LOT closer to the shore than 50 yards, but trust me, they were probably 60 or 70 yards away. You can hear that the stereo image is kinda flat. That, I think, is the result of X-Y spacing used at a distance. This track can be played in a loop. I tried to make sure that the loop sounds seamless.

TRACK02_SHORE_LOOP_01_2-52.ogg, vorbis encoded, 3.08MB, 2:50

Track 3 was made at the end of my two weeks in Michigan, with the AE5100s. These were very reasonably priced, considering their quality, I think. These mics were placed about 3 meters from the surf at about head height. The resulting stereo image captured by these cardioid mics in ORTF arrangement is very good. This track is cropped so that if played in a loop it is seamless. Note that this track is over fifty megabytes long and will certainly take a few minutes to download. The surf was much lower than previous days, but there are times when the wind did kick up quite well; I guess about 15 to 20 MPH. It was very strong. The windscreens on the 5100s are effective, but even at that strength of wind, you will hear some rumble at times (about 6:30 in, for example.)

TRACK03_SHORE_LOOP_03_45-50.ogg, vorbis encoded, 52.0MB, 45:07

Of course, I did make some recordings using the 4050s, but I didn't have any wind screens for them, and boy howdy, they do NOT like even the slightest breeze. And I can tell you, there was almost always a strong wind at the lakeshore. Maybe I'll crop a sample down just so you can hear it anyway, for the sake of comparison. The sound quality was good, of course, but the wind completely obliterated the sound when it kicked up.

I also made a good deal of ambient recording in the cabin, etc. I took home about 7 gigabytes of wave files! I intend on posting some of that, too. Then you will be able to hear my family arguing about all kinds of tedious crap in between heated games of Scrabble. OH, the joys of the family vacation. In case any of them are reading this, I have to say I am very glad they were all there, I rarely see them, so it's all good, really.

Sorry I don't have any visuals for you. My camera died shortly before I left on vacation.
Andrew