Journal on the Art of Record Production

The article reports on Unheard Sounds, a project exploring extreme transpositions of sounds containing frequency material above the human hearing threshold. The authors demonstrate how using 192 kHz sampling rate and a 4 Hz – 100 kHz frequency range microphone results in sound files that can be transposed at least 2-3 octaves down without significant degradation in sound quality and presence compared to using conventional microphones and/or conventional sampling rates (48 kHz). We then demonstrate how these transposed sounds can present interesting sonic material for composition and improvisation.