Wave sound
Also known as: surf sound, water sound
The sound of breaking water, which is the most characteristic audio in surf footage and the hardest kind to record without ruining it.
Updated
What it means
Wave sound is broadband noise with structure. A breaking wave has a rising hiss, a crack as the lip lands and a long wash afterwards, and the sequence communicates the size of it better than the picture does.
It is also physically hostile to a microphone. Water, spray and the wind that comes with a swell all arrive at the capsule together, so what gets recorded is usually Wind noise with waves somewhere underneath.
That is why surf edits lean on music more than most. The real sound is frequently unusable even when the footage is excellent, so the Soundtrack carries the sequence and the water appears only where it survived the recording.
How it works in practice
A housing changes everything about the result. A closed Dive housing blocks wind and muffles the wave at the same time, while an open frame keeps the sound and lets the wind in with it.
Recording a separate ambient track from the beach is the reliable trick. Clean wave sound captured from a fixed position lays under the footage convincingly, and nobody can tell it came from a different wave.
In the mix it works best as texture under music rather than as the main event, brought up for a moment at the point of impact and dropped back afterwards.
What to watch out for
Levels set for a quiet lineup clip badly when the set arrives. A wave breaking close to the camera is far louder than the paddle out, and the loud part is the part worth hearing.
Filtering wind takes the wave with it, because both are broadband noise occupying much the same range. There is no setting that keeps one and removes the other.
Water on the lens also correlates with the best audio, so the clips that sound most dramatic are often the ones spoiled by Water droplets on the lens in the picture.
How RawClip handles it
Where the camera captured usable water sound it stays under the music at the moment of impact, and where the track is mostly wind the music carries that stretch alone. Nothing is pushed forward merely because the footage was dramatic.