Freesound Forums

I have discovered that recording thunder is a lot more difficult than I imagined.

Here's one attempt that I made during a recent midwestern thunderstorm:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=81388

I was looking for a loud clap of thunder -- and I finally got one -- but this one pegged my level and created an annoying crackling sound where the wave form clipped.

I use GoldWave for all my post-processing. I fed that sample through every filter I could think of, but I could never get rid of that crackle.

Does this render this sample useless? Is there any way to fix it in post processing?

It'd be a shame to lose it because otherwise it's such a nice sample.

The problem is the sample is missing information. Everything that should be 'beyond the clipping' just isn't there, simply because it exceeded you recorder's boundaries.
You could technically recreate it by manually drawing the missing pieces in a capable sound editor, but it's not very practical. And I think this clipping is too much. There is no way in the world you can fully recreate it, other than of course wait for a new thunderstorm and attempt to record a similar thunder.

I tend to agree with Nemo. I have in the past "recreated" missing peaks by manually drawing the waves using Cool Edit Pro - but it's a long laborious process and at the best only guesswork.

I fixed the clipping on the thunder sample using, surprise surprise, "Clip fix", in Audacity.
Now the bad news: fixing the clipping does not change the firework-like crackle one little bit, sorry.

Well, rats. that's kinda what I thought. But I thought I'd throw it out to the forum to see if the sample could be salvaged.

I guess I'll have to wait until the next big thunderstorm, huh.

Microscopia
Hint - turn your recording levels way down - you will find it easier to amplify up to the loudest section later rather than having to deal with clipping (which is an impossibilty as you've already lost the info! ) :wink: