Underwater Acoustics

Passive Research | Active Research | Links

Passive Research

Sonic Properties of Water:
(http://filmsound.org/QA/underwatersounds.htm)
“Historically speaking, underwater sounds are very muffled, as if water mutes high end. This is of course exactly backwards from what water actually does. But the audience has grown accustomed to hearing muffled sounds underwater, so they will expect that to some degree.”

There’s no such thing as “stereo” underwater. Since sound travels so much faster in water than in air, our ears don’t know how to distinguish the timing difference, so we can’t locate point of origin as being left, right, or the much overlooked up/down.”
– David Farmer

Research Notes:
- The deeper in the water you get, the softer the sound.
- The further you are from the sound source (air), which means when you are deeper underwater, the softer it is.
- This effect is very minimal unless the distance is extreme.

Some Audio Processing Methods:
- Lowering the pitch of normal water and applying reverb creates an underwater effect.
- Using a low pass filter with reverb creates an underwater effect.
- Using a dynamic equaliser (or any other equalizers which allows adjustments of the filter over time), gradually allow higher frequency sounds to pass through so as to create a rising effect underwater (vice versa).

YouTube Videos:

Sounds of Moko | uploaded by mooshnz
This video clip is of a dolphin named Moku. You can get to listen to some underwater acoustics and sounds from the dolphin itself.

Dolphin, Underwater Tour Boat Noise | uploaded by WildDolphinFoundatio
This video clip features sounds of dolphins and a tour boat underwater. The sound quality for this clip is not very good, as with most YouTube videos. Use a earpiece or headphones when listening to it. This gives us an idea of how a motor engine sounds like underwater.

You Are Completely Underwater. | uploaded by whitenoisemp3s
This video clip shows a first person point of view underwater. Underwater acoustics and ambience also captured in the audio. The visuals pretty impressive.

Active Research

Notes from My Pool Experience
by Ryan Kong, May 16, 2008 at 12:10 am
Technical & Underwater Acoustics Researcher, Audio Engineer

Today’s my off day, so i went to the pool, then shun bian do some research. Here are some interesting finds:
- they have 15 balls.
- the table looks nice.
- when u poke ur fingers into ur ears tightly, u are underwater! (do on land)
- the jacuzzi (yishun safra) can provide us with the underwater machinary noise. (it just sounds like machines from underwater, unlike motors which go “tut tut tut tut tut”) but the splashing will not (with care) touch the mic.
- the bubble sounds “blurp blurp” are from ur mouth (in case u dont know!!) – most prolly no need, just write down nia.
- the “heavy sound” that u hear underwater seems to get heavier as u submerge deeper (confirmation needed)
- the water seems to take away the higer frequencies more than the bass.
- u can hear ppl shouting above water, but when ur deeper, it gets softer until a point u cant hear =)

Interesting Notes:
1. Insert your fingers carefully into your ears, the sound you hear is actually pretty similar to an underwater “ambiance”.

2. For humans, there is no stereo sound underwater.

Links

EO Study: Listening to Rain Page 2
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Rain/rain_2.html

underwatersounds
http://filmsound.org/QA/underwatersounds.htm

How to Make Your Vocals Sound like It’s Underwater with Cool Edit Pro 2.0 – Associated Content
http://www.associatedcontent.com/video/30853/how_to_make_your_vocals_sound_like.html

Research in Underwater Sound
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~blackrse/equipment-catalog.html

Research in Underwater Sound
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~blackrse/h2o.html

Sons de Mar
http://www.sonsdemar.eu/

Underwater Camcorder! $10! – Video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/648138/underwater_camcorder_mod_10/

Underwater Noise
http://www.underwaternoise.org.uk/noise_sources/index.shtml

YouTube – No Quarter-Led Zeppelin:how to make the underwater sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjwdQsI9ZTU