Environments

Purchased last night and now it’s been removed from the App Store so I can’t download. What the hell?!

The recordings are wonderful and have a richness and warmth beyond those in similar apps I’ve tried. The backstory around Irv Teibel is fascinating and it’s great to see the original artwork. However the app itself is very basic and suffers quite a few glitches around audio playback and behaviour. Also the sounds themselves haven’t been enhanced to allow seamless looping which makes the loop feature fairly pointless. This leaves me wishing that I could just buy the original tracks on iTunes.

This elegant app is the perfect home for Environments, the only nature music series that is required listening for music fans. Great for drifting off, tuning out anxieties, or disguising commute noise.

I was fortunate and thrilled to snag all 11 of the original pressings a few months ago. This is a superb series and the record quality would be excellent if recorded today. The fact that these are mid-century field recordings is stunning. At first I was convinced they were foley. In any case, I got the records before I knew they were on streaming as well as their own app, but I wasn’t disappointed. The app is very well developed. I often gift it to friends who enjoy my record versions, though I’ve recorded those to tape by now to mellow the tone on some of them and to enable loop without using my phone. But the app is convenient especially if I’m not home. The remasters are fine, seems that they mostly compressed them to satisfy consumer grade earbuds. The app does not replace the records, but it’s nice to have.

The spacing is all wrong with the dynamic island on iPhone 14 Pro

As a childhood listener of the Environments album series, I was pleased to find that the Numero Group had resurrected these recordings in the form of an app. It’s a creative endeavor and also very practical. The nature and loopability of these long form recordings lend themselves well to the format. I’ve used this app a lot over the past few years, putting my baby boy and myself to sleep and naptime and bedtime. He loves to look at the landscapes that accompany each track. Worth every penny and more.

Excellent quality of natural sounds; rain storms, country Meadows, nights. Vintage recordings sound amazing on headphones. Lots of value for the price.

This app is perfect for my needs. I hate silence. These curated sound recordings are about an hour long and include a lot of natural variation. Other apps have sounds on a loop, which doesn’t sound real. With this I feel I am in touch with nature as fell appreciation for the sound artist who put this together.

App launches but crashes immediately after pressing play. Worked fine in older iOS versions.

As an enthusiastic previous owner of the Environments LPs, I spent the past few decades searching for digital versions of these recordings. Finally found them here and they are exactly as I remember them: Richly detailed, incredibly evocative recordings that transport you. For meditation, background to work, falling asleep, or just firing your imagination, these are the soundscapes to buy.