SQUAREWHEELS.org.uk
Audio
SQUAREWHEELS.org.uk
This page was last modified on 6 March 2011
I am a musician, and appear to have a “musician’s ear”; thus I am perhaps more inclined than most to recognise and enjoy some of the many sounds to be heard in everyday life. For instance, I find that memories need not just be represented by photographs: sound-recordings can instantly transport a person (whose eyes are closed, for best results!) to the situation where the recording was made. Several of you (mostly from “across the pond” in the USA) have written to me to comment on how my recordings of the London Underground brought memories of a not-so-recent visit to London flooding back to you.
As a young child I used to mess around with a beaten-up (1) Sony Cassette-Corder; at the suggestion—and with the guidance—of my brother I took it along when my parents went to use a large astronomical telescope on a mountain in California (which, being ancient, made many interesting and distinctive noises) for the last time. Pretty soon I was making various other home-made tapes, including covert recordings entitled Mealtimes with Granny (!) and such-like, which have proved surprisingly entertaining (and revealing!) in their own way, twenty years later.
One thing led to another, and in 1997 I bought a MiniDisc recorder with the specific aim of making better-quality recordings of the “Hastings” DEMU (see the Hastings Diesels Ltd website). My MD-recorder soon got used for recording many other types of sounds (see, for instance, my Concorde page!).
This page was created early on, as a place to share some of my earliest recordings that were made when my new “toy” was indeed new. The sound-clips section is very much in need of overhaul and updating of content, but I hope you will find something there to whet your appetite. There is now a Clip on YouTube which may be more encouraging.
All of the recordings in the sound-clips section page were taken by me using a Sony MZ-R30 MiniDisc player/recorder, on Sony or Maxell 74-minute re-recordable MiniDiscs. For the majority of the recordings, I used a Sony stereo electret active microphone, the ECM-MS907 (which was spuriously and wrongly marketed as being “digital”); I’ve been extremely impressed with the quality of its work, and would heartily recommend it to anyone in spite its fairly high cost. For the first three recordings below, I was using a 1970s passive condenser mic, as my new mic took a long time to arrive. Don’t be put off MiniDiscs by the lack of quality on these clips, that is due to the lossy mono encoding; some of the noises are rather fine when heard through good headphones directly from the MD-player.
All the sound-files originally assembled here were created one afternoon in 1999, and the content han’t been seriously worked on since until recently (see YouTube section). As the University PCs didn’t carry RealPlayer G2, far less RealEncoder, I used Mike Balsom’s computer (using RealProducer G2); so my thanks goes to him for that. All of the clips were encoded at 32.1kB/s (mono). I suppose it’s a snapshot of how consumer-grade computers were at the time that the above was considered quite normal…
A few people have expressed an interest in having me make an audio cassette containing a wider selection of, for instance, Northern Line sounds or DEMU noises; since September 2003 I’ve been promising in principle to create a compilation CD-R (it could equally be made available on cassette or MD if required). It would be no trouble to make several like it—so email me if this tickles your fancy. (PS: There’s a dozen or so of you who are clamouring for this—please bear with me, these things happen on almost-geological timescales!)
Since creating this page I have recorded many fantastic noises (thunderstorm, DEMUs at East Croydon, Doleham and Ore; Hastings unit on tour; lots of good stuff from the Northern Line; Leyland Leopard coach in preservation; Lend-Lease rail-joints near Chilham in a 4-CIG; to name but a few).
I have also been slowly gathering knowledge, understanding, and (working!) equipment & software to allow me to get on with producing both this section of the website, and the compilation-CD:
In 1999 I purchased a Sony MDS-JE530 MiniDisc deck; in February 2004 I finally had a desktop computer that behaved itself (don’t ask); and in July 2004 I tracked down the (ludicrously expensive! £65 for a wire with a transducer on one end!) Edirol UA-1D optical-to-USB audio hookup lead, allowing me to take the optical output of my MiniDisc deck and feed it into my computer via USB. This helps guarantee that I’m producing the best quality (as there is no Digital-to-Analogue conversion and subsequent re-sampling to Digital). And in November 2006 I got a 250GB HDD to give me space on the desktop computer for the MiniDisc samples. However, still I lacked computing-power and available time/energy.
Now (2011), I have no excuses: computing-power is amply sufficient (MacBook Pro); I have the Mac-compatible Cakewalk UA-1G USB audio interface (Roland’s successor to the UA-1D); there is well over a Terabyte of external HDD-storage at my disposal; and I use Audacity (the excellent free, open-source, cross-platform sound-editor). The rise to prominence of YouTube as a suitable means of publishing streams of audio/video material resolves issues surrounding bandwidth/quality.
We do now have the first such clip published, see below.
The existing sound-clips will be re-sampled from the MiniDiscs at CD quality, and published via YouTube. Thus we can all be rid of RealPlayer (hurrah!).
Once the clips are sampled, it’s a relatively minor matter of choosing & editing the clips required to assemble the relevant compilation. I remain committed to making progress with this project: it’s still just a question of time. Thanks for bearing with me; messages of support, or of change-of-address/lack-of-interest/death, et cetera, are always appreciated! <grin>
2007 April 23
These old files are in RealAudio format; the free RealPlayer can be downloaded from http://www.real.com/player/.
I’m sorry: I’m well aware that RealPlayer is a ghastly application that few would choose to use. I wouldn’t wish to force listeners to use it but I’m afraid that, just for the time being, this is what there is! But one day soon this should change… I have some plans for the future of this page.
This page is hosted at the SQUAREWHEELS.org.uk server, but the sound-files themselves remain hosted at Angelfire to avoid my having to pay for your bandwidth-usage. Therefore, to select and hear the sounds please go to the sounds media page hosted at Angelfire, where the sound-files are.
Please go to the sounds media page to select and listen to the sound-clips.
On 6 March 2011 I tried creating a uni-framed video with a soundtrack that comprised the actual audio I wished to publish, and uploaded it to YouTube.
Please switch on Annotations to see a textual commentary as the clip progresses.
Here is that first recording:
HDL Deal Wayfarer railtour departing from Deal and tackles the steep gradient up through Walmer towards Martin Mill; 60-foot rail-joints, and the rare shorter ones, can be heard through much of this recording which also features full power for seven minutes! [8′06″]
(1) – Well, it was once I’d got my grubby little hands on it!
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SQUAREWHEELS.org.uk > Sound-effects