Record Your Own Ambient Sounds

The very best ambient sounds transport you to places you feel safe to relax and focus: rain on your roof, your crackling fireplace, your favorite café. Capturing your own versions of these ambient classics doesn't even require a fancy recording setup. The phone in your hand can pick up ambient sounds far better than you'd guess.

What makes a good ambient recording

• Steady, textured sources. Rain, running water, fire, distant traffic, room tone, the murmur of a crowd. Anything without a clear start or stop loops cleanly.
• A minute or longer. More material means a less obvious loop, but you also don't need much more than that. The real sweet spot is anywhere between two and 10 minutes. Layer in a few sounds around that length and you'll go hours before you actually hear the same combined loop.
• Distance from sharp moments. One loud clink or stray voice can pull your ear every time the loop comes back around. Try to make sure your recording won't pick up noises you don't mean to. The easiest way is to simply record longer and trim it down to your best calm part.

Recording tips

• Reach for Voice Memos. It's already on your iPhone. If you're recording ambience, go to Settings → Apps → Voice Memos → Recording Mode and pick Stereo first, so the rain falls on both sides of your head instead of down the middle. (Spatial Audio recordings import fine too but they record compressed).
• Keep the background in. Voice Memos can filter out everything but voices, which is exactly backwards for this job. While recording, open Control Center, tap Voice Memos, and select Wide Spectrum so the ambience stays in the take. (Not available on every iPhone model.)
• Beat the wind. Wind on a mic wrecks more outdoor takes than anything else. Block it with your body, record from a porch, or wait for things to settle.
• Keep it still. Any touching or movement of your phone will turn up on the finished sound. For best results, prop it somewhere and step back for a bit.
• Forget the levels. Quiet is fine. Sound Check levels your import to sit with the rest of the library automatically.
• Trim it up. Unless you were able to start and stop recording without touching your recording device, you'll probably want to at least clean up the ends of the file. Voice Memos makes this trivial and it's well worth the effort.

From recording to soundscape

Got a take you like? Trim the fumbling off each end and bring it in. The Voice Memos guide covers the exact steps on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Flip on Loop Sound and Randomize Start, give it a fitting icon, and it lives right next to the built-ins.