The article provides very interesting and valuable insight into technical backround, ways of recording and use of various equipment in Chris Watson’s field recordings in various outdoor environments with sometimes even extreme conditions.

An extensive list of tips how and when to use specific types of gear to achieve specific sonic results of the recorded audio can be almost extracted here.

I found interesting Watson’s comparison of pros and cons of digital and analog recorders. Digital domain provides more portability and reliability. Gear is getting lighter, smaller and amount of audio recorded larger. Analog gear which often doesn’t possess qualities mentioned below on the other hand stands out by its physical aspect and distinctive sound.

For sound design he prefers original sound of hardware synthesisers due to better harmonic frequencies than those contained in software synths.

Watson’s way of post-processing of recordings depends on the goal or the task but personally he insists on doing as little as possible. Here Watson emphasise the importance of quality of the recorded audio sample at its source. He thinks ahead very carefully about the nature of the sound before pressing the record button so he avoids overwhelming himself with extensive library of low-quality samples later. Then he carefully choses specific microphones and pieces of gear based on experience gathered over the time and around places in order to capture those thoroughly premeditated coherent sounds.