Field Recording Mastering Rules

I believe in preserving nature sounds so I work tirelessly to discover locations where true natural soundscapes can still be heard. Since I work to preserve endangered natural soundscapes, I want the listener to hear the sounds as if they were present themselves. A "natural soundscape" is a pristine soundscape devoid of all human-generated sound. 

  • Rule 1: Field recordings including any human-generated sounds (i.e. planes, cars, and distant generators) must be thrown out. These sounds cannot be removed in Izotope's RX.
  • Rule 2: Excision of human-generated sounds from long recordings and subsequent crossfading is not allowed. If a section is removed, then the sounds must be edited as two shorter clips.
  • Rule 3: Sounds made by the field recordist can be removed such as handling noise, stomach gurgles, clothing sounds, etc. Also, sounds made by minor gear malfunctions may be removed in RX.
  • Rule 4: De-plosive, Spectral Repair, and Dynamic EQ (with a low shelf filter) can be used to reduce low wind energy in RX.
  • Rule 5: Limited use of high and low shelf filters is acceptable to reduce noise floor hiss, but never when sounds are present in those frequencies.
  • Rule 6: Noise reduction is never allowed.
  • Rule 7: RX Ambience Match is never allowed. I do not filter out low frequency noise pollution and then fill in the space with the unnatural sound created by Ambience Match. 
  • Rule 8: Mark recordings as “natural soundscapes”, or list what was removed in the Soundminer “notes” metadata field.
  • Rule 9: I do all my soundscape editing in RX, metadata in Soundminer, and use Reaper when I need a DAW. 

These rules are my opinions and are not meant to be universal to all field recordists. I am just striving for clarity in how I master my field recordings.

Libraries Where I Broke the Rules: 

  • I follow my Field Recording Mastering Rules as much as possible, but occasionally I break them.
  • If a human-generated sound was removed from a clip, it is marked in the Soundminer "notes" metadata field as "Removed noise pollution".
  • For example, I might break my rules when I can easily remove a distant generator from an otherwise amazing clip of a glacier calving (using Izotope's RX software).
  • That said, if a recording has had a human-generated sound removed, I think it is imperative not to portray it as natural soundscape. That sound can still be beautiful, but it is not as rare.