I was completely oblivious to the recent Discovery mission but luckily was on twitter the afternoon of the lift off & someone posted a link to a live video feed of the event & I am so glad I got to see it in real time – it was really exciting!!!! If you didnt see it watch this video (& crank up your monitors – I love those sounds!)
Of course it made me think, I’d so love to witness a launch myself AND record it, but as this video illustrates, even if I was to go there I couldn’t get close enough to the action (or far enough away from the other spectators) to really enjoy it or record anything meaningful… I guess it would be a case of getting a few drinks together & a designated driver & leave the record kit at home…
And again yesterday on twitter I was blissfully ignorant of the Space Shuttle returning to earth until someone posted saying they just heard the sonic boom of re-entry… and of course someone & their dog was videoing at the time…
And while this video isn’t from the latest mission, it has such beautiful sounds!
After watching the live launch of the mission I dug out my DVD copy of the IMAX film THE DREAM IS ALIVE which is about the space shuttle & has great sound, thanks to Ben Burtt plus Walter Cronkites (RIP) great narration….
But the last bit of space shuttle media I will mention is the best& its via Bob Katz, the excellent mastering engineer: “Thanks to the help of a friend at NASA, I was able to record the liftoff of the Space Shuttle Discovery on March 8, 2001 from the Kennedy Space Center VIP viewing site at 3.1 miles from the launchpad (as close as they let anyone get during the launch except for crew members). Also with the courtesy and help of Gary Baldassari, Mike Morgan, and Andy DeGanahl, who supplied some of the equipment used. Andy and I braved the all-nighter and captured the launch at 6:42:09.059 am EST.”
If you visit this link you can download what I craved after watching those youtube videos ie a quicktime with high rez audio! But that isn’t all: “as of 9/10/09 we are very pleased to present to you the Shuttle Launch in Surround, at 96 kHz/24 bit. This is a free download of the original 4.0 recording (just the shuttle launch, without the music accompaniment). Thanks to Chris of airwindows.com for inventing the asynchronous conversion that allowed me to synchronize the front and surround channels of this recording, which were made on two independent Masterlink recorders. The result is incredibly realistic and natural. If you have a properly bass-managed surround system with high headroom subs (preferably a pair of subwoofers with accurate response) then this recording will knock your socks off. The proper reproduce gain is +7 dB above the Dolby standard calibration. That’s right, turn up your monitor gain 7 db higher than the SMPTE standard 83 (or “85″) level calibration. The free audio files are only available to Digido.com registered users (it’s easy to register, just press the link at the top left of this page) and can be found in the media, download section after you register. If you download and can play these files go the Contact Us page and give me some feedback! Enjoy— Bob Katz.
AWESOME!!!!!!!!
I’m downloading the files now (200MB) but its 10pm and I’m not sure my neighbours would appreciate a shuttle launch in my apartment right now, so its going to have to wait until the morning…. But first thing Monday morning….
Thanks so much Bob! And thanks also for your book on mastering which I bought a while ago & have read cover to cover – highly reccomended!
It is a spectacular feat of engineering… buuut, is it just me or is most of the dynamic range in this (24/96) recording taken up by massive deformation of the mic diaphragm, like the crumpling of a bread wrapper, or the crackling of a flame?
Dear Pokwer. Are you referring to my recording (which is now in surround at digido.com) or to someone else’s recording of the shuttle? The crackling noises you hear are also known as the “cavitation” or “popcorn” noises and these noises can ONLY be heard at less than 5 miles from the launch site!
This is the genuine sound that the shuttle makes and some theorize that it is caused by a vacuum and the air that rushes in to fill the gap, much like a thunderclap.
Obviously, inferior mike preamplifiers will distort this sound and it could easily sound distorted as the high frequency peaks are quite high (see the spectragram at digido.com) but I can assure you that they are VERY accurately recorded and not distorted on the super-clean recording which I have made.
Hope this helps.
Bob
Excellent post! Lot’s of fun stuff…
I remember reading about Ben Burt doing sound for that DVD and he just couldn’t get the launch sounding ‘right’ until he added some distorted elements (I tried to find where I read this but haven’t yet) but two things to consider: most of the energy is surely going to the subwoofer, which wont make crackle sounds… but more importantly unless you have heard it with your own ears its hard to gauge how close the recording is to reality. But the mics he used can handle up to 134dB SPL:
http://www.dpamicrophones.com/en/products.aspx?c=item&category=188&item=24019
re dynamic range etc, have a read of the section at Bob Katz site re analysing his Shuttle recordings with SpectraFoo”
“Through the magic of Spectrafoo’s audio analysis tools, the audio “portrait” below demonstrates that there’s nothing like being there. The spectragram runs from T minus 4 seconds to about T plus 2 minutes. I don’t think there’s anything on earth that compares with the sound and sight of that fire-breathing monster on liftoff. If you study these incredible specs, including a spectragramic timeline of the liftoff, you will see that to do justice to the experience, you will need a low-distortion subwoofer system capable of producing up to ~119 dB SPL on peaks at 25 Hz and ~116 dB SPL at 16 Hz and below! If not, then you will not be able to feel the chest-thumping, clean solid bottom that is produced. Ironically, the shuttle liftoff from the VIP site is “just loud enough” in person, a pleasant and not ear-damaging experience. Think of it as an 8.3 GWatt amplifier/loudspeaker with zero percent distortion and response down to DC! Running at say, 40% efficiency, that would take 20 thousand megawatts from the breaker box! Those figures are calculated by Dick Pierce from the comparable Saturn 5 moon rocket. These are the figures at 0 foot distance. Of course, some power has been dissipated at 3.1 miles, but examine the astonishing figures below.
It turns out an LFE channel is not needed to reproduce this recording with a properly bass-managed system, because “bass” is the focus of this recording and it requires turning up the gain by 7 dB ABOVE Dolby standard. However, it could not be engineered to reproduce at Dolby Standard monitor gain without redirecting the bass to an LFE channel or it would overload the digital level. But then the bass would not be in stereo, and the shuttle definitely sounds better to me with stereo bass.”
When the Space Shuttle launches, the sound emitted from the engines creates a tremendous amount of acoustical pressure. Acoustical levels reach their peak when the Space Shuttle is about 300 feet (91 meters) above the launch platform, and cease to be a problem at an altitude of about 1,000 feet (305 meters).
During the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981, acoustical pressure caused by the main engines / solid rocket boosters igniting was so great that it caused damage to the shuttle wing’s control surfaces.
At launch, the sound pressure level is: 215 dB (http://www.makeitlouder.com/Decibel%20Level%20Chart.txt)
Space Shuttle payload bay is rated for a maximum pressure of: 145 dB
The solution to prevent these high sound pressure levels from damaging future shuttles was to design a water based sound suppression system.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/sound-suppression-system.html
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/nasafact/count4ssws.htm
This system starts to unleash 1,135,620 liters of stored water 6.6 seconds before solid rocket booster ignition. The water flows through huge pipes and is sprayed below the rockets to help suppress the acoustical pressure. The water helps to block the reflected path of the sound so it cannot bounce back towards the shuttle. With the system in place the sound pressure is reduced to 142 dB, which is just 3dB below the design requirement.
To make sure the sound pressure levels from the engines are constant, they are occasionally measured. When the engines are test fired at the test ranges in Utah, NASA engineers wire the engine with microphones and place more microphones down range to record how much pressure is being outputted. Check out this “Daily Planet” documentary on testing the engines for sound and vibration (Sept 28, 2007):
http://broadband.discoverychannel.ca/discovery/?id=3539
(I love how fast the engine goes from OFF to ON. AWESOME !!)
And for a rocket engine test with some cool audio, check out this video of NASA’s new “methane” powered engine. (I love the drone at the end when the engine turns off…..)
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/images/methaneblast/testfiring.wmv
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/04may_methaneblast.htm
This is fascinating… and awesome. I didn’t realize the extent of the LF content in the recordings until I took the screens off my monitors and watched the drivers flail around. I have never heard subs which could begin to do this recording justice. I think I’m just going to have to go and witness the real thing one day!
“Think of it as an 8.3 GWatt amplifier/loudspeaker with
zero percent distortion and response down to DC!”
I wonder if the crackling sound has something to do with the distortions in the air itself due to the extreme (215dB)SPL? I read somewhere that above around 194dB, the rarefacted part of the wave becomes a perfect vacuum and thus clips the waveform valleys…
Just have found Ben Burtt’s comment which Tim was writing about (David Sonnenchein “Sound Design” book):
“I was miking at various distances, but the sound didn’t still sound full enough. I stuck a microphone out the window of a moving car and the wind totally distorted the recording. I took that sound, ran it through a subwoofer, took all the highs out of it, and when I added it to the production sound somehow it sounded more like the real thing than the real thing did. I can’t explain that, but sometimes you have to experiment to get the best effect.”
Similar thing Ben Burtt said about making sounds for Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (http://vimeo.com/channels/41219#3037441), where distorted sound gave “real” element to the sound.
Hi Timothy (and anyone else!),
I am a television researcher working on an engineering programme about the space shuttle and one of the things I am looking into is the Sound Suppression System. I am at this stage trying to understand exactly how the sound is absorbed or suppressed by the water. From Timothy’s posting it sounds like the reflection is blocked – how does this occur?! I have spoken to various scientists and there seems to be several ways in which water can absorb sound (air bubble oscillation, aerosol action and reflection scattering) and was just wondering whether you might know which processes the shuttle sound suppression system uses ?! It would be great to speak to anyone who knows anything about this and so if possible email me – rachel.millar@darlowsmithson.com
Thanks,
Rachel.