The Wansdyke & District Forums

For the recordists among us. We did an overnight in a barn out past the estate boundary for the walk, the kind of empty stone barn that is all owls and draughts, and I left a recorder running on the straw while we were outside. Got the file back and there is a stretch, about forty minutes in, where the ordinary barn sound, the wind and an owl and the odd creak, just stops. Not fades. Stops, like someone shut a door on it. Dead air for a few seconds, then it all comes back. No click, no handling noise; the recorder did not fault, it kept its timestamp running clean through the gap. The EVP crowd would have me hearing voices in it but i am honest, theres no voice. theres just the nothing where the sound ought to be. Anyone who reads audio want to tell me what makes a recorder go silent without faulting?

That is a genuinely odd description, Mick, and I say that as someone who wants a dull answer here. A recorder dropping to true silence without a fault, keeping its clock, is not a flat battery and not a full card, both of which leave their own marks on the file. Wind and owl stopping together for a few seconds could be natural, animals do all go still at once when a predator moves through, an owl can silence a whole field. But that would not silence the WIND. I do not have it. Send the file to someone who does audio forensics properly. I would genuinely like to know, and I do not say that often about a ghost-walk recording, no offence meant.

The wind is the bit that stops me too, Mick. The animals going still is real, I see it on the bat detector, a whole soundscape can drop in a second when something moves through, a fox, an owl on the wing, and everything holds its breath. But that is the creatures choosing to go quiet. The wind does not choose. The wind does not care what is passing. For it to stop dead and start again with the clock running clean, I have no natural answer for you. I have sat out enough nights to know what the down sounds like, and it is never nothing.

That is exactly it Geoff, the wind. Everything else I could talk myself round, a knackered battery, a full card, me knocking the recorder with my boot. But the wind stopping and the clock not missing a beat, thats the bit I keep coming back to. I sent the file off to a chap who does proper audio forensics, friend of a friend, so we shall see. Hes had it a fortnight and gone quiet on me, which is either theres nothing in it or hes as stumped as the rest of us. I am saying probably an awful lot less than I was, arent i. I dont have an answer. I just know what I heard, which was nothing, in a place where there is always something.