Wilderness Americas – Amazon Rainforest

Wilderness Americas: Amazon Rainforest is a collection of sounds captured in the West part of the Amazon basin (El Oriente) across 3 countries of South America : Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia.

This library focus on the wildlife and wilderness sounds of the Amazon rainforest/jungle.

Reaching the Amazon region is not easy and needs many resources and time.
Also, the weather conditions are very bad for the people and audio equipment: extreme humidity, rain, and heat don’t work great with microphones and recorders.

We have selected audio gear for this purpose: tropicalized microphones: sennheiser MKH 8020 and MKH 30 series in a surround configuration + a world-renowned recorder: Sound devices Mixpre 10T. We have taken also a humidity-proof microphone basket (Cinela)

This weatherproof setup permits us to record even under strong tropical rains. (We have also a special mic cover which reduces the sound of a raindrop on the microphone basket)

We have always focus on places, where they protect and respect the “Selva” (Forest), especially places like National Park, Research Station, or community places. -> We went record in these different place: Madidi National Park (BOLIVIA), Podocarpus National Park (Ecuador), the biological station of “Jatun Sasha” (Ecuador), the forest around the Rio Napo (an affluent connection to the amazon river) (Ecuador), the “Reserva de Produccion Faunistica Cuyabeno” (Ecuador) and the region around Mocoa, between Santa Rosa Canyon and the Paway Reserva (Colombia).

We have used “sound trap” technics for long and immersive recording: we have hide microphones and protect recorder in a waterproof bag and let it for days and night in the middle of the rainforest (usually 24 hours non stop recording). This system allows us to record the sunrise, dawn chorus, and sunset, time where the animals are more active.

Here are some animals we have recorded :

Exotics Birds and more especially: parrots, parakeet, cuckoo, Oro Pendulo, cacique, magpie, etc.
Insects and more especially: cricket, cicada, mosquito, fly, etc.
Mammal: Amazonian flying squirrel, spider monkeys, howler monkey
Amphibien: frogs, toads

Recordings include:

These 117 sound takes include the sound of :

-56 sound takes recorded in the Bolivia’s Amazon rainforest.
-53 sound takes recorded in the Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest.
-8 sound takes recorded in the Colombia’s Amazon rainforest.

These 117 sound takes include the sound of :

-88 sound takes recorded in the Amazon rainforest during the day.
-29 sound takes recorded in the Amazon rainforest during the night.

and -34 sound takes recorded in the Amazon rainforest under the rain.

The stereo soundbank contains only the stereo files (117 files).

Formats:

-117 DMS files, to be decode in many different formats (5.1, stéréo (XY/ORTF/AB), mono, binaural). To decode it you can simply use your DAW or for more convenience the Harpex plugin or the free Shoeps DMS plugin.

-117 5.0 files, directly decoded from DMS setup using Sennheiser MKH 8040-30.

-117 2.0 (stereo) files, decoded from MS setup using Sennheiser MKH 8040-30.