What Is Reflected Sound and Why Should I Care?

A reflected sound wave can result in one of two situations: an echo or a reverberation. Neither of these reflected sounds is a normally acceptable sound wave for your recordings.

The Sound Shark captures all the sound directly in front of it and focuses it onto your microphone. It does not know that you only want the sound within the first 10 feet, for example, to be heard. It also doesn’t know if that sound is bouncing off a flat surface on its way to the Sound Shark.

The point is that sound can bounce off a smooth surface into your Sound Shark. For example, if the surface is a smooth, flat, reflective surface parallel to the face of the Sound Shark, a sound coming from behind can bounce off that surface and back into your Sound Shark.

The best way to reduce or eliminate the reflected sound is to point your Sound Shark in a way that there are no flat surfaces parallel to the face of the Sound Shark. This can be accomplished on camera, but also consider the setup that allows the Sound Shark to be on its own stand. If you watch the video about Will Crockett’s Sky Deck Project, you will see that Will points the Sound Shark downward at a steep angle, so it totally ignores the noise that reflects off the flat wall.