How To Listen

The majority of our pure nature recordings are binaural, meaning that a special microphone technique has been used that captures important spatial spatial cues residing in the incoming sound waves, thereby allowing for an amazingly spacious and immersive listening experience.

Headphones and Earbuds: For the greatest realism, try listening with headphones or earbuds. This allows for a clear separation of the right and left channels, leading to a stunning “you are there” experience that may actually fool you into thinking you are outdoors!

Speakers: Speakers work fine as well, but it is critical to listen in a quiet environment, with minimal extraneous sounds. For an optimal sense of spaciousness, be sure to sit midway between the two speakers. It also helps if the speakers are placed more to the sides than in conventional setups where the listener forms an equilateral triangle in relationship to the two speakers. Including a subwoofer in the sound delivery chain is important if you want to hear the most low-pitched sounds in a recording.

Surround Sound: Modern “home entertainment systems” often include receivers that have advanced settings for processing stereo recordings into “surround sound” that will play from five or more speakers. If you own such a system, you might want to experiment to see if any of the settings please you. In general, our binaural recordings respond well to this kind of processing.

Volume Adjustment: No matter what listening setup you choose, avoid playing our recordings at too high a volume, where the loudest sounds annoy you. The goal is to set the volume to a natural level, close to what you would actually hear in nature. That is usually accomplished by turning the volume down somewhat in order to insure a more relaxing and meditative listening experience. Please do not insult your ears and desecrate our recordings by playing at an unnaturally high volume!