Sound Recordings

Cool Finds

Here’s How Video Game Designers Give Voices to Imaginary Creatures

All they need are digital vocal cords, voice box and mouth

May 15, 2015

Listen to the Newly Reconstructed, Very Creepy Voices of Thomas Edison’s Dolls

A lab figured out how to hear the rare talking dolls without damaging the original recordings

May 6, 2015

Cool Finds

An Artist Is Trying To Preserve India’s Fading Street Sounds

As shopping malls and suburbs come to Delhi, one woman fights to save the sound of its street vendors

April 20, 2015

New Research

At Night, Fish Communicate With Special Calls, Whistles and Grunts

Dropping a hydrophone into an underwater cave helps researchers make sense of the din

April 6, 2015

Trending Today

How “Learned Deafness” Might be Letting Noise Pollution Win

The world may be noisier than ever but one scientist warns that our attempts to blot out the sound may cost us dearly

February 18, 2015

Cool Finds

Save the Voices of Tolkien, Joyce And Tennyson

The British Library is fighting time and budget constraints to save its vast collection of audio recordings

January 14, 2015

New Research

Listen to Newly Discovered Bowhead Whale Songs

Bowhead songs have been elusive, but researchers managed to record 12 unique songs using hydrophones

January 14, 2015

Cool Finds

Making Dead People’s Pulses Beat Again

A new device can transform 150-year-old printed representations of heart beats into actual sound

December 16, 2014

Cool Finds

Let Wildlife Recordings From the 1930s Take You Back to Nature

Hear African wildlife from the 1930s with the British Library’s nature sound archives

December 4, 2014

New Research

What Do Glaciers Say When They Sing?

Glaciers make some curious sounds

November 12, 2014

Cool Finds

From Lightning on Jupiter to Apollo 13’s Call for Help, Hear Some of NASA’s Greatest Recordings

An audio archive captures some iconic moments of space history

October 23, 2014

The World Is What It Is Today Because of These Six Innovations

In a new book, Steven Johnson describes the many technologies that glass, refrigeration and other fundamental inventions have made possible

September 30, 2014

New Research

Baby Turtles Coordinate Hatching By Talking to One Another Through Their Egg Shells

A number of turtle species make sounds, but this is the first evidence that babies do so before they’ve even hatched

July 17, 2014

Cool Finds

In Maya Lin’s New Exhibition, a Singing Ring Contains the Sounds of Endangered Worlds

The Sound Ring represents places as diverse as California forests and the Indian Ocean

June 9, 2014

Trending Today

Sound Experts Want to Record One Full Day of Human Noise From All Over the Earth

The project could help scientists better understand the human soundscape and quantify how it changes over time

April 22, 2014

Art Meets Science

What Are the Acoustic Wonders of the World?

Sonic engineer Trevor Cox is on a mission to find the planet’s most interesting sounds

March 17, 2014

Art Meets Science

Traveling to Japan—Through a Symphony of Smells

A new performance, staged in Los Angeles this weekend, revives one man’s failed attempt to put on a smell and sound production more than a century ago

January 10, 2014

Listen to Doc Watson Picking Away at his Banjo

A new release from Smithsonian Folkways highlights the talent of a bluegrass master

February 2013

Listen to the Elizabeth Mitchell Experience

Listen to the Elizabeth Mitchell Experience

November 2012

Los Texmaniacs Release New Album

What does jalapeno-spiced polka music sound like?

September 2012