Some people collect vials of sand from beaches they have visited, but I collect the sounds of the waves breaking on the shore. Well, it’s not much of a collection all I have so far is the Caribbean Sea while in Mexico and this example of Kitsap Peninsula surf recorded recently near the dock at the Port of Indianola in Washington. It’s a start, right?
I made several recordings at this location, but I particularly like this one that captures a sharp clicking sound made by palm sized rocks tumbling in the waves as they break on the shoreline. It was a very windy day, but despite a few bits in this example I managed to shield the wind from the PCM-50 by using a wind screen and putting my back to the wind behind the unit.
Port of Indianola Surf
One of the 
One of the very first tests I made using my DIY binaural mics was this example of back alley ambiance. I stood as still as possible because this first version of the headset had a stiff cable that was very sensitive to vibrations. Birds and traffic are the most obvious sounds, but there is a high pitched screeching going on throughout the recording that became even more noticeable after applying normalization. While making the recording I actually took the mics out of my ears to make sure they weren’t generating the tone and I knew I wasn’t going crazy when it turned up in the recording. The sound is either a near by train, or a neighbor using a power tool. It sounds more like a tool, but the freight trains that go through my neighborhood make some very similar sounds to this.
I captured this very typical example of restaurant ambiance recently at my favorite neighborhood Thai place in Minneapolis. I’m still running the PCM-D50 through its paces, but I sense that I’ll be looking forward to a long and happy relationship. This one minute and seven second clip includes many of the usual sounds sounds of diners in a food establishment: talking, laughing, coughing, children, plates clinking, ice in drinks, footsteps of the servers, and take away being placed in paper bags.
One of the first few recordings I made with my Sony PCM-D50 was to capture traffic ambiance. This was really a pretty good test for the stereo imaging of the built in mics. I held the device, so there is some handling noise, although I did put a wind screen on the D50. This recording would have been impossible without it. The mics on the D50 are very sensitive to wind. Even indoors if an object, like a door, moves the air near the unprotected mics you will hear the capsules flapping in the breeze. Despite the wind screen you can hear a bit of wind noise around 00:34. The stereo image is acceptable, but it’s not as broad as other stereo mics I’ve used such as the Shure VP88. I have yet to try the 120 degree, Y pattern setting, which I imagine will spread the image considerably.