THE LONDON SOUND SURVEY BLOG | COMMENTS
Occasional posts on subjects like field recording, London sounds past and present, other websites worth looking at, articles in the press, and news of sound-related events.
London Sound Survey on Radio 4
Posted by IMR on 07 September 2009
WELCOME TO ANY Radio 4 listeners who may be visiting after the brief interview with me aired last Sunday morning. I’d never done a radio interview before, but luckily the journalist Alex Bushill edited out all the er er I mean um bits. Here’s a link to it:
That’s how I found my way to the site, but the promised link at 09:30 did not happen. Not sure if they eventually posted a link, but I’d found the place via ‘good old google’...
I realise I’m not in London, but I do visit because of work at times, so I’ll try to remember to make a few recordings of such interesting things as AHUs on top of various buildings, chillers and cooling towers and the hum from compressors in basements. 
Posted by Morseman on 07 September 2009
Morseman: you wrote cooling towers . . . do you ever to get to go inside them? I can only imagine it looks and sounds pretty impressive.
Getting recordings to London Sound Survey is quite straightforward via the Upload link on the home page. It’d be great to hear what you’ve recorded.
In your other comment you mentioned a mic in a parabolic reflector. These are particularly popular with wildlife recordists who want to home in on distant sound sources.
If you want advice on audio kit, I guess it depends on your budget. There are quite a few different small portable digital recorders on the market now, ranging from about £200 to £300. I like the Edirol R09-HR, but Sony has a new machine out, the PCM-M10, which could be good.
All of these little pocketable digital recorders have built-in stereo mics, which are just fine to get started with.
Posted by IMR on 07 September 2009
Cooling towers cover quite a range of things, from the very large ones on power stations to much smaller ones for industrial and commercial chiller.
I have been inside one of the large power station ones, many years ago now, when I worked for PowerGen. However, nowadays problems like Legionella mean that access is restricted these days.
The noise inside, if ‘on load’ is pretty impressive, but I didn’t have a recorder with me at the time.
Thanks for the advice on recorders. I was looking at one made by Zoom but was put ff by a poor report that said it didn’t have an ‘off’ button!
Posted by Morseman on 08 September 2009
I’ve never used a Zoom, but they seem good value-for-money. The new Sony recorder comes out in October this year, so worth keeping an eye out for reviews.
Hadn’t thought of Legionella being a problem, is it to do with stagant water lying around inside? I still remember that scene from Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil of the interior of a cooling tower, pretty impressive!
Posted by IMR on 08 September 2009
No, the problem with Legionella is when it gets into the water, by poor management, and then the water is sprayed around as a vapour.
That then gets sprayed onto people and they catch it. It was sprays that caused the major outbreaks that happened a few years ago.
I’ll keep a look out for the Sony, but they do seem to be expensive. I’ve been reading up on the Olympus stereo recorder as well.
Posted by Morseman on 08 September 2009
Congratulations Ian on getting onto Radio 4! interview sounded great, very interesting presentation.
Posted by Tim on 13 September 2009
What’s the arrangement with the British Library? Will it be hosted with their web sites or will it be available as an exhibit/installation? A fantastic legacy to leave!
Posted by jhuckle on 14 September 2009
The article does give that impression, although there isn’t any arrangement to date with the British Library to deposit sound recordings with them.
But it would be a good idea to do so and both the BL and the Museum of London would make excellent repositories.
Plus I’ve been itching for an excuse to put the strapline ‘For posterity not prosperity’ under the site logo.
Posted by IMR on 14 September 2009
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