This is where I work:

the bid'ness

At the top left (partially cropped) is the lot where the trucking guys store all their old trailers (along with, I suspect, bodies, drugs, and other assorted paraphernalia), to the north is the Glue Factory Pond with it’s mysterious white sheen (possibly a light reflection, though I choose to believe it’s some byproduct of the mutant geese that spawn there every spring), and to the right of the picture, across the street from the office is a brown stripe.

That brown stripe is the busiest passenger rail line in the country. Called the “Northeast Corridor,” it runs between Boston and Washington, DC and carries the high-speed Acela train as well as regular Amtrak and commuter rail service. When I picked up my Rycote kit last summer, my first excursion was across the street and through the woods.

These were recorded in mono with a Sennheiser MKH-416T into an Edirol R-4 Pro at 24/48. These recordings were made over a couple days and spliced together so it’s easier to listen to on the internet. Although there’s a spot at approx 1:00 in both the first 2 clips where the regular Amtrak and Acela pass by in opposite directions within seconds of each other. That was pretty cool to see.

Acela High-speed Express:

Northeast Regional:

MBTA Commuter Train:

My impressions of these recordings: meh. The source material definitely has potential, but this isn’t something I’d use to prove to the world what an awesome recordist I am. Relative to earlier recordings, I thought the sound was a bit muffled, which may have been due to the heavy windshielding I was using. The recordings also suffered from a number of technical issues: there was an embarrassing amount of handling noise, particularly as the train approaches. I edited it out of the clips I uploaded, but most of the approaches are hosed. Also, there was a weird thing going on (that would have blown the approaches even absent of any handling noise) that I think shows the recorder just dropping a certain amount of time from the recording (it’s not empty space-the two regions are spliced together. Think of it as cutting out a region while in shuffle mode). I suspect this had something to do with the pre-record buffer on the Edirol. This buffer, when enabled, was designed to store the preceding x number of seconds of audio, even when not recording – the idea being that it was save your butt if you blew a punch-in and missed the front of whatever you were trying to record. I had that buffer set to the max all the time (~23 sec IIRC), because it’s actually fairly difficult to hear trains approaching. They make much less noise than you’d think a giant, speeding hunk of metal would make. Aside from that characteristic metal whipping noise the tracks make when the train is approaching, you won’t hear it until it’s right on top of you, and at that point, it’s probably too late to hit record. It’s FAR too late if you wanted to catch any distant horn blasts. Anyways, I suspect the recorder wasn’t properly appending the buffer to the head of the recorded audio. I haven’t really listened to these recordings before and only just caught this.

The location itself is only ok. There’s a fair amount of traffic on Morse St and surrounding areas; there’s a small power substation across the tracks from where I was standing; there’s a chocolate factory (which smells more amazing than you can possibly imagine) about a quarter mile down the track; there’s a noisy stream directly behind where I was standing; and the whole area is filled with big, leafy trees that make a ton of noise when blown around by the wind coming off a 150mph train. The convenience factor, though, on a scale of 1-10 is about an 11. It would probably be better to go back in the winter when things are quieter, and perhaps closer to 8-9pm (or early in the morning) rather than at 6-7pm when I did it.