When the Recorded Soundscape Roars and Rumbles — Exploring wind noise, hidden frequencies, and the collaborative work of the microphone, ears, and moving air
Text, images, audio: Anne Tarvainen
In the cultural study of sounds, field recordings are not intended to produce a high-fidelity auditory replica of the original environment. Instead, they serve as research memos—reminders of the places and situations encountered in the field. Weeks or months later, listening back to the recordings can vividly transport the researcher to those moments, recalling not only the sounds heard but also the atmosphere they evoked. In this sense, a recording can be understood as a snapshot of certain elements from a lived and experienced soundscape.
But what if a field recording is dominated by sounds that were barely noticed—if at all—on location? What if the recording is hijacked by hisses, rumbles, or murmurs that carried no meaning in the lived moment? I decided to turn my ear toward these unfamiliar frequencies, just for a while, and listen to the sounds my ears had ignored in the field but my microphone had almost too faithfully captured.
Joint actions of the microphone, ears, and air movements
A recorded sonic environment can never fully replicate the original in situ experience. The human ear and the microphone operate differently (Watkinson 2024). On a recording, I do not hear the “original” soundscape, but the microphone’s interpretation of it. And when I later listen to it, through loudspeakers or headphones, my ears no longer adapt to the sounds as they did in the original location. Some frequencies, typically those at the very low or very high end, may now occupy a greater portion of my perception. The rumble of a truck driving past, for instance, might suddenly feel overwhelming on playback, drowning out all the other sounds for a moment.
Compared to the microphone, human hearing has a remarkable superpower: the ability to adapt. In any given cultural and social situation, our attention is drawn automatically to the sounds most relevant to us; others fade into the background (Truax 2001, 15–21). The microphone, by contrast, captures sounds more indiscriminately, regardless of whether these sounds are relevant to the final listener or not. As a result, recordings often contain a surprising amount of what we might label as unwanted sound, or noise.
For me, as a soundscape researcher, disappointment often takes the form of wind noise: the low rumble caused by turbulent air pressure fluctuations striking the microphone’s acoustic sensors—fluctuations not considered sound in a strict sense (Lyons et al. 2021, 21).
LISTEN: Wind hits the microphone
I once believed that the “rumble of wind” could be produced only by the interaction of wind and the microphone. That assumption changed in February, when I stood on a blustery hill in Skruv, Sweden, listening to the soundscape of the village. The gusts were so strong that they periodically blocked my bare ears with a deep, rumbling hum, masking other environmental sounds. I realised I had experienced this many times before in windy weather—yet had largely ignored it, as it never felt meaningful enough to notice.
The human ear is generally better shielded from wind than an average microphone (Lyons et al. 2021, 24). In strong turbulence, however, our brains may also interpret nearby pressure fluctuations as sound – a phenomenon of particular interest in the field of competitive cycling (Cat-ears.com 2025). This insight led me to think more about the co-agency of air movements, human hearing, and recording equipment—and how they jointly shape listening experiences, both in the field and later in the archives. Perhaps, I thought, I didn’t need to be so anxious about wind noise on my recordings—a point my colleague Meri Kytö, a more experienced field recordist, kindly reminded me of during our fieldwork.
The faint squeaks of a windvane
Back from the field, some of the most intrusive noises on the recordings led me to listen to the audio files in a way that differed from my original intention. I began with the idea of editing specific files to better reflect the soundscapes I remembered from the field. This directed me to a kind of frequency-by-frequency “combing” of the recordings.
Let me explain: Using the PreSonus ProEQ plugin in my DAW, Studio One 7, I initially attempted to identify and tame the primary frequencies of wind rumble. In this way, some of the sounds I remembered hearing on site—sounds that had been buried under the heavy blanket of wind interference and other loud, low murmurs—were restored.
One example is the faint squeak of an old, rusty windvane at the top of the bell tower in Nauvo, Finland. That night, strong gusts swept the hill as I was passing by, and I recall being startled by brief, high-pitched squeaks lasting only seconds at a time. The sound was weak but striking—easily located and memorable for its uniqueness. Later, however, when I played the recordings, I could barely hear it through the wind interference and other low-frequency hums, despite my efforts to shelter the microphone during recording. To my relief, a little EQ work brought the delicate windvane sound back to a more audible level. It is worth noting that an experienced sound engineer would have been able to accomplish this with greater finesse.
LISTEN: Old windvane (original)
Our world is humming and hissing
Before long, I found myself scrolling through all possible frequency bands of my recordings, using the EQ’s solo function to isolate specific ranges while muting others. It was fascinating to listen to the environment in this way—sliced up. It was a tangible reminder that the world is full of hums and hisses, on all possible frequencies.
I realized, for example, that a low murmur of boat engines and airplanes appeared more often in the background of my recorded hike along the Westerholm Path in Nauvo, Finland, than I had noticed during my visit to the location. Similarly, the constant rustling of leaves in the wind and the swishing of my own jacket on every move were the kinds of high- and mid-frequency sounds that the microphone had picked up, but which I had barely noticed in the original listening situation.
LISTEN: Some low frequencies from the Westerholm Path, Nauvo (50Hz enhanced)
LISTEN: Some mid frequencies from the Westerholm Path, Nauvo (2kHz enhanced)
LISTEN: Some high frequencies from the Westerholm Path, Nauvo (10kHz enhanced)
One might ask: What is the significance of such low- or high-frequency sounds, which are rarely noticed in everyday listening? While these murmurs and hisses may not lead the listener’s auditory attention, they form a background—a canvas—for more prominent sounds such as people’s voices or birdsong. If these grumbles grow too loud, stealing the attention from the more meaningful sounds, they can become quite frustrating. After all, people generally prefer to navigate their daily environments without added sonic obstacles (cf. Truax 2001, 15–21). Yet, considering the opposite situation, without a constant background hum, the soundscape would feel strangely empty. Imagine total silence interrupted only by an occasional shout, dog bark, or bird cry—almost nightmarish in its starkness.
Soundscape as a weave of sounds
Sonic environment emerges from the vibrations of all present materials, including air. These sounds are so tightly woven together that even careful audio editing afterwards cannot truly separate them. “Sounds are not clearly separated by silences; they are not discrete entities, but part of an overall texture,” like Barry Truax has indicated. (Truax 2001, 140.)
For me, as a researcher studying the agencies and co-constitutions of sounds, this means shifting focus. Instead of listening only for the most prominent sounds, I should attend to the full spectrum—the ways all sounds exist and act together. I might ask, for example: How are different hums and murmurs intertwined in everything we hear? And how do they culturally shape our everyday soundscapes?
REFERENCES
Cat-ears.com. 2025. “Cycling Wind Noise and How We Can Help” Cat-ears.com. https://www.cat-ears.com/cat-ears-summary
Lyons, Gregory W., Carl R. Hart, and Richard Raspet. 2021. “As the Wind Blows: Turbulent Noise on Outdoor Microphones.” Acoustics Today 17 (4): 20–28. https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2021.17.4.20
Truax, Barry. 2001. Acoustic Communication. 2. ed. Ablex Publishing.
Watkinson, John. 2024. “Microphones: Part 3 – Human Auditory System.” The Broadcast Bridge, December 4. https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/17119/microphones-part-3-human-auditory-system
The language check for this text was conducted with the assistance of AI.