1974 Chevrolet Camera
I was very satisfied with the Porsche Carrera recordings I did a couple of weeks ago. However, setting up mics on a car is quite time intensive, and since I am planning a huge car recording session next year I would love to be quicker in setting everything up. So this time I choose a dynometer to record a 1974 Chevrolet Camaro. This recording took place at Rothe Motorsport, a company that specializes in pimping cars. They had for example a VW Gold there with 650 hp going up to 100km/h in less than 3 seconds.
Anyway, they have an awesome dynometer set up in their garage, which I was able to book. The car we recorded went up to 150 mph using something around 270 hp. I wanted to set up two mics in the engine compartment and one for each of the two exhausts, but it turned out that it sounded better using three mics for the exhausts, two close miked and one about 1.5 m away. We used one mic to record inside of the engine compartment, that was enough. The dynometer was able to set a fixed rpm, which is very important later for creating looping sounds back in the studio. Recording at 96kHz to fit current standards, there are about 3 GB of sound files on my hard disc.
We had bad luck with the weather. Since it was raining and the tires were very big, we decided not to record drive-bys. It was too bad, but drive-bys with wet street sound on the recording is not usable.
Once it is edited and implemented in fMod, the car’s sounds will be used in an open world game – but I have to wait to announce the name of the game until next year.
In the meantime, have a look at some pictures of the recording and listen to a short clip of the recording here:
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