Recording and playback techniques employed for the Urban Sounds project

The “Urban Sounds” project, born from a cooperation of the Industrial Engineering Department - University of Parma with the municipal institution La Casa della Musica, aims to record characteristic soundscapes in the town of Parma with a dual purpose: delivering to posterity an archive of recorded sound fields to document Parma in 2012, employing advanced 3D surround recording techniques, and creation of a “musical” Ambisonics composition for leading the audience through a virtual tour of the town. The archive includes recordings of various “soundscapes”, such as streets, squares, schools, churches, meeting places, public parks, train station, airport and everything was considered peculiar of the town. This paper details the advanced digital sound processing techniques employed for recording, processing and playback.