Recording the sound of the car Part 1

Today I did an initial test of recording the sound (and video) of the car. My focus is on trying to capture reasonably high quality audio, which is quite tricky in a loud open-top car! To record sound I'm using a Zoom H1n audio recorder.

This has a stereo microphone setup in an X-Y configuration, which should give some kind of stereo image. Obviously there is a lot of wind noise to deal with, so a wind shield is essential. The device has a limiter, but setting the gain is not straightforward as the loudness levels vary hugely on the road. I set quite a low gain to stay away from the limiter as much as possible. 

The recorder was mounted on the passenger side panel, just below the widescreen armrest. For video I just used my iPhone mounted on the passenger headrest column using a bike phone holder. I did some post-processing on the audio, mostly compression and some EQ.

As a first go I think it's ok. Will try and improve things next time.