Polish outdoor thunderstorm recording

[Ludia]

Hi all,

I was wondering if someone did this in the past and wants to share some tips & tricks. Yesterday night I made a half an hour recording of a nice thunderstorm passing over with my Zoom H4n. This device is highly sensitive (the way I like) but of course catching a lot sounds as well I don't like that much. There are some noises in there from neighbours doing stuff, a car driving through the street etc, I want to reduce as much as possible. I tried some EQing but I think I need to learn a lot still to try and accomplish this.

Any tips would be highly appreciated.


Regards, Luc

[philip888]

Originally Posted by Ludia

Hi all,

I was wondering if someone did this in the past and wants to share some tips & tricks. Yesterday night I made a half an hour recording of a nice thunderstorm passing over with my Zoom H4n. This device is highly sensitive (the way I like) but of course catching a lot sounds as well I don't like that much. There are some noises in there from neighbours doing stuff, a car driving through the street etc, I want to reduce as much as possible. I tried some EQing but I think I need to learn a lot still to try and accomplish this.

Any tips would be highly appreciated.


Regards, Luc

I love thunderstorms also.
Izotope RX is what I use to get rid of unwanted sounds.
Did a recording last week outside.
The crickets got so loud in the recording you could not hear the speaker.
Izotope RX fixed it.

[albee1952]

Often, you can cut out the odd noises(try SHUFFLE mode) and crossfade. The best bet is to record the storm at around 3AM so most other folks are sleeping(and not messing up your ambience). I got a nice surf recording with a stereo cassette recorder on the beach of Block Island at 4AM Too bad it was cassette....

[Ludia]

Thanks Philip and Albee,

Unfortunatly I don't have the RX (I should look for a try-out version, if they have any). Anyways I followed your suggestion Albee. I did quite a lot of cuts with cross fades. That works pretty well to be honnest. At least I got rid of cars etc. I still had from time to time some harsh raindrops but those I could bring down using some EQ. Did some compression to bring out some far away rumbles. It's pretty good now. I left over with 13 minutes out of 35 minutes recording though LOL.

It's seems we are in for another thuderstorm tonight. I hope it is around 3AM this time instead of 9PM like yesterday. anyway I sure hope its not at 8.30PM because then we play the WC Soccer Final !!

Thanks again both for your input.