San Francisco Fog Horns

On the same trip that I made the Wave Organ recordings, I woke up in the middle of the night to hear fog horns off the coast. Even in a North Beach hotel room, the sound was clear.

Bay Bridge, San Francisco
Photo by Tom Campbell

In the first recording, you’ll hear some vehicles on the street, and also the constant low-pitched rumble of the climate control system in the building next door:

The second recording is an odd, warbly version of the same file with a noise removal filter applied — my attempt to remove the ambient machine noise:

This serves as a cautionary example of what can happen when you get carried away trying to “fix” recordings with software. (In this case I was using Audacity’s noise removal capability — not the fault of Audacity, just a user with an itchy slider finger.) File this one under Happy Accidents.