Freesound Forums

Hey there.

I'm pondering on the best way to record soundscapes for general research.
I'm not a researcher, I don't actually know what people today or future may want/need.

I could imagine a few things curious people or researchers could want, like comparing city soundscapes with electric cars vs fuel cars, how frequent drone usage was thought the years and how it affects the soundscape, the progression of wildlife, crowds getting bigger or moving from rural to cities or inversely.

Ideally, id record a location none stop all the time. But that's not practical for data storage nor IRL practical reasons.

So far I record stuff kind of at random.
But I presume there could be some theory to set a effective net of recordings.

For example, work days probably ressemble themselves, A monday is probably really similar to thursday. And within those days, 10am is probably similar ish to 11am, but 8 o clock would be rush hour and maybe a drastically different to 10am.

So if one had 12h of recording time in a week. Probably best to record a work day, and the weekend. Recording 1h of night, rush hour, dinner time, afternoon work, evening rush hour, late evening.
Then the week after do the same thing but on other days, maybe shifting the recordings by half an hour.

For a nature soundscape, it's probably easier. Night, early morning, afternoon, dusk. Will probably capture the most varied wildlife. Week days wouldn't matter but maybe a sunny day vs a cloudy day would be a thing to keep an eye for. Repeat once a month. to have that rough idea of wildlife soundscape throughout the year.

There's probably a balance of overlapping cycles, (does a monday rush hour sound the same as a tuesday rush hour etc...) but also needing to vary where we are in the cycle (recording the very start of people going to work vs the end of rush hour.)
While also keeping in mind special events/times.
Also recording 10-20min takes regularly is probably better than one 24h recording once a year.

I know this is overthinking, and ideally just record more, I'm going to do this on my freetime and willingness anyway But I'm still curious if there's some official theory or study behind something like this.