I made this sound recording of a frozen lake in the winter of 2005/06 in the area around Berlin. Frozen lakes are known to give off most noise during major fluctuations in temperature: the ice expands or contracts, and the resulting tension in the ice causes cracks to appear. Due to the changes in temperature, the hours of morning and evening are usually the best times to hear these sounds. In my experience, thin ice is especially interesting for acoustic phenomena; it is more elastic and sounds are propagated better across the surface. Snowfall, on the other hand, has a muffling effect and the sound can only travel to a limited extent. The ice sheet acts as a huge membrane across which the cracking and popping sounds spread. Underwater microphones proved especially well-suited for these recordings: in a small hole drilled close beneath the surface of the water, the sounds emitted by the body of ice carry particularly well. The most striking thing about these recordings is the synthetic-sounding descending tones caused by the phenomenon of the dispersion of sound waves. The high frequencies of the popping and cracking noises are transmitted faster by the ice than the deeper frequencies, which reach the listener with a time lag as glissandi sinking to almost bottomless depths.
Update to this post here. (17th Jan. 2010)
And more about dispersion here (19th Jan. 2010)
Also check the fantastic Yosemite’s frozen lake recordings by Cheryl E Leonard (15th Feb. 2012)
silent listening 
Thrilling recording, Andreas! The little pops remind me of a campfire and the falling glissandi seem to maybe be the same phenomenon as “whistlers”, those atmospherically spread-out radio frequency sounds that lightning strikes create. T i m
That explains the sounds in the ice-diving scene in “Encounters at the End of the World”! Thanks!
Another one where a guy in northern USA (Wisconsin) filmed the lake making sonar noises as he was ice-fishing.
Think “Star Wars” !!!!
I have a 12 acre lake in southeast Missouri that normally does not experience a frozen surface for any length of time. My wife and I were watching the Olympics last night when we heard the strangest sound outside. I determined after lowering the sound on the TV, that it had to be a sound generated from the frozen lake. I was blessed to go outside an hour later and hear the phenomenon, again! Cool!
Thank you for sharing. I enjoy this very much and it sheds new light on my love of ambient + experimental music.
wow that is amazing.
Thanks everybody for the nice comments, I wrote a sort of “update” to the post, check it here: https://silentlistening.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/ice-recordings-updated/
The best, Andreas
Any way I can download this? Very relaxing to listen to…
The recording is part of the piece “frost pattern” and will be released by the German label Gruenrekorder in June this year. There will be other spectacular ice sounds featured in that composition, so maybe you wait till that release comes out. I’ll make an announcement about the CD here as soon as it is available. The best, Andreas
I live on a narrowboat, which is currently frozen in, I hear these sounds all night and they scare the shit out of me! Anyway beautiful recording
Dude what kind of shit do you smoke???
I’ve been trying to listen to this all day, but since (for some reason) you chose to use Adobe Flash to play an audio file, I can’t.
I have it installed, but it’s so buggy that clicks work about 30% of the time, so it won’t start.
That sounds like a personal problem.
In your own words, “Thanks for making my day even more annoying.”
You probably should take care of your computer. 90% of websites use flash for one thing or another. Blaming the website is unacceptable.
Thats like blaming your parents because your forgot the pay your own phone bill.
PS, no one will buy a CD of the sounds of ice.
Will they listen to it? yes.
Will some people torrent the leaked pre-release? yes.
Will some people be willing to pay to download a track off of a site such as eMusic? Yes.
Will they pay for a physical copy and shipping for a CD full of ice? No.
Thanks for making my day even more annoying.
Dear GZeus, if you can’t listen to the track here, try to listen to it on my homepage, you can even download it there. With all respect: I know, nobody is buying CDs anymore these days, but please consider that a lot of money and time and effort went into making this and other recordings possible. We decided on a physical release because the composition “Frost Pattern”, of which the dispersion sound is part of, was also mixed in a 5.1 surround version, so the upcoming CD on Gruenrekorder will be a SACD – a normal CD plus the surround mix for the ones with the right player. I hope we can make a download of the whole piece available on the usual platforms. Everybody interested can subscribe to the newsletter on my homepage to get informed about the release. The best, Andreas Bick
People did purchase a CD of the sound of ice. Mine sold out.
Anyway, great recording! I’ve always loved that sound.
Hi Collin, that sounds interesting: you recorded the ice melting with some hydrophones frozen in an ice block. Great. I want to hear it! I did something like this with glacier ice from Greenland, there the melting process has a distinctive sizzle sound, you can hear it here, but naturally I was not able to deepfreeze the hydrophone into that sort of ice…
I would buy the CD- but I’m old school.
Still available at Gruenrekorder as Download or physical CD:
http://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=2727
great sounds, thanks for sharing
any way we can get an MP3 of this?
Check my homepage for a download.
Thank you, Andreas. Nature speaks, and you have recorded a little piece of this ‘language’. RZ
Thanks so much for this post with these sounds. I got some ice recordings last year but not as long or detailed as yours!
This is awesome.
I experienced something slightly different last week, but due to the lack of decent audio recording equipment I just took photos: http://bit.ly/6fjoRH
Can you imagine what it sounded like?
It was phantastic.
It looks like you heard the slight clinking and squeaking of frozen ice on the twigs, maybe moving in the wind? It is a very subtle and quiet sound, I heard it once on a night with some “blitz-ice”, as the Germans call it. It was beautiful, and I didn’t had my recording equipment with me either…
It was really low wind (that one can’t hear) moving twigs as well as every single needle of the fir trees around. So what I heard were thousands and thousands small, silent cracks in that came in slow waves and these conditions lasted for two nights and a day. Will try to record some next time, if there’s a next time.
“Pewww, peww, whooosh!”
Fantastic audio, very curious indeed.
That’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever heard. Thanks a million for posting this!
The native american indians ha a name for the sounds made by the ice. If you know it or can find it please let me know. I live on a large lake and enjoy the sounds. Thanks Ted ps Love the recording!
I live in sunny South Africa; this kind of phenomenon & landscape is something i have never witnessed firsthand. I was intrigued by the sound of the ice. I used your recording in a trac here: http://soundcloud.com/restive/frost-patterns
That’s a nice track and version, I loved to listen to it. Started following you on Soundcloud. Cheers, Andreas
Simply beautiful. Probably the most dramatic fieldrecording I ever heard.
great recordings Andreas. Nice to hear ice cracking from the inside.
I’ve built hydrophones just using piezos with decent results (even stereo)
http://maaheli.ee/main/archives/272
For all the Star Wars nerds out there, the laser blast sounds were created from hitting antennae tower guide wires, not ice. These ice recordings are much more unique and harder to achieve.
Anyone who ice fishes hears these sounds all the time as the ice expands and contracts. What this recording does not capture is the low, deep sub-base resonance that echoes across a big lake really cool to feel and hear.
>>>great to hear Andreas…instantly there & snappy, sharp reverbs! faint echoes GREAT torsional vibration TWISTS fol post silence, it sounds like a pair of full frequency sensors (less lower freqs seem to suggest they were not hydrophones?) physically attached to the ice shelf
uniting Global’s ice people & their DVD previews = segue net-working Internet II streams?: welcome soundvision! 4 handhelds, etc
Great stuff.
I tend to forget how mysterious and amazing the nature is – until I encounter something like this! Thank you for sharing and reminding us how extraordinary place the Earth is.
some of the most extreme natural sounds i have ever heard.
Do you ever feel like you need to get in touch with the universe/nature and if yes, how do you go about doing so?
Hey, that’s a very cool thing! cheers!
Unbelievable!! I doubted whether the sound recorded was truly a recording of the natural phenomena… As I read on I discovered it was real! Sublime :)_
Thank you Andreas for this great recording!
It’s no use trying to record the unbelievable sounds of ice with things like digital camera or pocket sound recorder — I’ve tried and failed. And yes — sublime is the word.
Ahhh, memories of Lake Nagawicka
I really enjoyed it,, many thanks for sharing the video…
I wish I would have located your web-site quicker! I had about 25% of what I was looking for and your website has that, and the rest of what I had to have to complete my research. Thank you and keep up the good work!
I’m waiting for the Kanye West remix before I say anything negative.
Sweet blog! I found it while searching on Yahoo News. Do you have any suggestions on how to get listed in Yahoo News? I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there! Thank you
Hi, there is no strategy, a lot of links and clicks from other sites do the job. I was lucky to have other blogs like boing boing and meta filter linking to articles here and after that it seems that this blog is automatically listed at other news aggregators as well. Good luck, Andreas
It really is beutiful, and I’m additcing now
Thanks for posting this sound. I recently heard all these sounds at a pond in the woods. It was amazing and surreal to hear the pinging, popping, and almost laser gun sorts of sounds coming from the pond. I wondered what I was hearing and your recording came up when I googled for an answer.
I heard these same sounds on the lake I live on in Minnesota. I also Googled for this and found your recordings. It’s the most surreal sound and such a cool phenomena. Thanks for the answer to my question.
Both your video and info were really great. Thanks to you, we were able to understand what we were fortunate enough to hear when we visited Yosemite recently. Here’s a link to what we experienced.
Looking forward to your input as we found it simply amazing. DK
Wow, great sounds! The lake must be very active during that recording, probably the temperature changed before you went there? Thanks for posting the link and the images in the video, reminds me of my trips to such places. This winter so far, Berlin is very warm, there was hardly any snow and frozen lakes to think of. Cheers, Andreas
Thanks for sounds! I love listening them on Masuria lakes (Poland), at night it sounds much better!
As usual you have delivered by having a number of incredibly
intriguing points and also I have already included
this site to at least one I most certainly will follow .
! . !
Great information. Lucky me I came across your site by
chance (stumbleupon). I’ve bookmarked it for later!
Thanks for posting this! I have been using this sound clip for an electrical engineering class for the last three years, as an example of a dispersive system – probably not what you had in mind when you posted it, but thanks!
Wow, indeed, that is surprising, but after thinking about it, it does perfectly make sense. Good to hear, that the recording can help you in your class. All best!
I live on a small lake in Massachusetts…73 acres. The last two weeks, the temp has been anywhere between -2F to 55F. Rain yesterday and freezing temps last night. Full sun in the am. I have never heard the lake talk so much. Nonstop. Very loud. I could even feel the sounds standing on the deck of our house thirty feet from the shore. Occasionally, if you are looking at the right place at the right time, you can see the huge cracks appear right in front of you. The whole phenomenon is truly amazing and remarkable. Everybody should experience this some time.
Very impressive, gives me goose bumps thinking of it!
Only slightly off topic…
There is a book called Journey by James Michener that was a chapter cut from his huge novel Alaska. It makes for an excellent book (and only 250 pages), I like to read it every few years. In it he talks about the Mackenzie River that flows north to the Arctic, and its tributaries. Since it flows so far north in such cold climes, the headwaters thaw way before the tailwaters, resulting in huge ice jams so compressed that pieces of ice as big as houses are tossed into the air, and land on shore. He talks about to booming sounds that they make as they are dislodged, loud as cannons.
Impressive! I heard similar stories about rivers in North Finnland that produce big ice jams that melt one day in spring and produce a lot of sounds. But pieces of ice big as houses is another story! Thanks for the hint!
We did not have any recording devises but the sounds we heard scared the crap out of us, we had hills all around us and they reverberated
what did sound like a Star Wars battle mixed in with howling and growling. Ive been hunting this area for 50 years and never heard anything
like this. My partner 30 years old and inexperienced in the outdoors wanted to run. I kept him there next to the lake until it growled and moaned, then we both ran! Good thing we had toilet paper!
I’m currently reading ‘South: The story of Shackleton’s last expedition 1914 – 1917’ by Ernest Shackleton. He mentions the sound of ice moving so I looked it up and discovered your site. Remarkable recordings. Thank you for sharing.