The Sounds of Silence

The Sounds of Silence

If you want to reduce background noise in your recording here are some suggestions.  Increasing the gain will just mean that the difference between your voice and the noise should be greater, so less need to increase the gain later which also increases the noise volume. The noise is from the internal circuitry of the mic / recorder, (or mic cable) and that is usually because of insufficient shielding from external radio frequency interference (RFI) which create noise in the internal circuitry.  These may not be possible to avoid in cities, as the neighbours' wifi and other radio sources will be present. Recordings far from cities have much less of that background noise because it is further away from all that RFI. The microphone cable can be a source of noise, so to check this you can try recording direct onto the recorder using the internal mics. You can also put an RF reduction device onto the cable. 

Audacity is a free program which can help with noise reduction. If the noise is regular you take a sample of it then the noise reduction removes this from the rest of the recording. You can also use a high pass filter to get rid of low frequency noise or a low pass filter to remove high frequency noise. 

Let me know your other ideas and I will include them here. 

Choose Your Own Utopia

The Future as we Write it. 

Chris Bonfiglioli 
Open University New Media Consultant

•     Sounding Coastal Change
•     Stories of Change
•     Earth in Vision

Is it a coincidence that many of the things described in George Orwell's 1984 and in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World have already come about in some form, or have been paralled in unexpected ways?  

The question is whether the stories led the reality or the reality was born from the stories.

The original Utopia by Sir Thomas More describes the an early 16th century idea of a perfect society.  Utopias, and science fiction works in general tell us just as much about the time in which they are written as they do about the future. But they also point the way to choices, good or bad ones. 

We are living in a time when technological changes are being chosen quickly and with little or no public debate. Who is choosing technology such as driverless cars, airport scanners and lethal drones? Surely we don't still think that technology is just something that happens to us?  No technology is chosen by us all either passively or actively. Even if our involvement is merely to acquiesce it is still political involvement.

    Photo by Martin Sanchez 

      

Photo by Simon Fitall    

Many of the films we watch are dystopian. Perhaps the present would be better if we started dreaming of better futures? this ties in with ideas of spaces of hope; designing spaces for better ways of living.  (David Harvey). The healthy cities movement (Len Duhl) and all the developments of this are also part of the search for happier, healthier ways of living.