Having asked around the forums (http://socialsounddesign.com/) for tips, I headed up to Silverstone this weekend to camp & record some sounds for the F1.

The cars were LOUD. I must have been 50 metres away and had to wear ear plugs and cans…the gear changes kick you in the chest!

It was an entertaining race, and great experience. Tech below:

I was up by Abbey (and walking around) and managed to get lots of useable material. I sampled at 24/96 but there’s not much going on above 20-25k, only the really raspy exhaust stuff.
I hired out some low sensitivity DPAs and ran them into a fostex FR2LE at almost 0dB gain, coming up to -10dBFS.
The recordings do sound small and tinny. I remembered distinctly they had weight and size to them, although if you played them back at normal levels, you’d probably get near to the feeling – it’s the extreme volume.
The Lotus F1 engines had a new front firing exhaust and this made some entirely wierd noises, great for SFX.
(click for audio)

F1 Silverstone 2011 © Lostrack