The Voices Of Flow

Deep and Menacing

The use of hydrophones within sound sourcing

Deep and menacing, the world of hydrophones offers an interesting take on recording sounds. Sound travels 4.3 times faster in room temperature water than it does with air. These allow for interesting variations of normal sounds.

Above is a contextual example of the hydrophone sounds created. Due to the nature of the recordings, hydrophones aid well in creating really dynamic pads and atmospheres relatively quickly. These could be used in a multitude of contexts such as space design, background tonality and deep underwater landscapes. These could be applied within games for sci-fi horrors or within deep underwater films.

For this, I explored the transmission of sounds within a studio space, recorded through a hydrophone placed in a large water tank full of water (room temperature). Photos of the setup are found below. The hydrophone used is made by Aquarian Hydrophones and is the H2A-XLR model.

The experimentation came not of the media being recorded, but the way in which we record that media. Because human hearing has adapted to fit with sounds travelling through the air, the sounds recorded in water offer a unique and interesting variation.

What this also means is that on the fly manipulation and effects processes can be made. For the example shown above, I have applied a few effects. The first effect I applied was a deep flanger at a mixed level of 10%. This created slight modulation in the frequencies and added higher frequencies which weren’t as apparent in the recording. Next, a ping pong delay was used to create the illusion of movement within the recording, since the sounds were being recorded in water, a slow movement of the sound felt like a natural step. Following this, a stereo shaper was applied to help increase the size of the sound. The intended medium was to replicate a deep and dark ocean, so to create the feeling of vastness, the stereo shaper was used to further widen the sound. Finally to really create the space I was aiming for I applied an algorithmic reverb, Valhalla Shimmer, to create in real-time space modulation and to apply feedback techniques to pull out interesting frequencies. Below are the applied effects in their chain order.