So last week, I took myself and the trusty 633 up to the cathedral at 7am to capture some ambience for the game. I went so early in the morning so as to avoid capturing as much human sounds as possible. I decided that a good starting point to begin constructing the ambience of the grand church in Taphobos was to actually record the sound of a church, then begin experimenting with that source material. I contacted the cathedral with the request and they were more than happy to let me record in the space, offering me wednesday as the quieter day of the week.

My equipment setup was the 633 and the Rode NT4 stereo X/Y mic, which i’ve used a number of times before to great effect. I was recording at 96k to SD, and I monitored on a pair of KRK headphones.

The sound of the space was, well, not what I was expecting. I’m not sure exactly what it was I was expecting – but it wasn’t what I captured. Sitting on the dusty floor in the middle of the main hall, I realized that the main sound source was actually the central heating and numerous radiators around the church. They produced a low hum, which was accentuated by the reverb of the space. The sound I captured was mainly this – the low rumble of the heating. I was disappointed to find the 633’s pre-amps actually created a vast amount of noise – moreso that i’d experienced using it before. This was largely due to the fact I had the gain running very hot – as the space was technically very quiet, I had to crank the gain up to capture the subtleties and nuances of the space. This resulted in the large amount of noise and also capturing arbitrary sounds – like the traffic outside and footsteps – much clearer that i’d have hoped. I felt this was a bit of a shame – as i’d been sold the idea that the S/N ratio was very good on the 633. Perhaps I used a bad mic. I’m not sure.

The sound I captured was usable though. I’ll roll off the top end and use the base hum as a building block to layer other sounds into, creating a multi-layered environment sound. I blogged about the recording on my 100 hours blog – you can read the post here.

Below are a selection of the raw recordings – these are straight from the 633, no processing or editing done (other than slicing up the clips to highlight interesting events).

(LO1)