So we get this:Īll those squiggles are the song of the Lark Sparrow. It’s good to leave some space (or, rather, time) before and after the vocalization. I’m not interested in my footsteps or voice, so I delete all but the bird. Next, the bird flushes, and I start talking into the recorder a bit after 19 seconds. At around 16 seconds, I start to walk toward the bird you can “see” my footprints in the form of those tall red columns. The bird starts singing a bit before 11 seconds and continues to a bit after 14 seconds. (Google “cardioid microphone,” if you want to get technical about it.) Another advantage of the zoom setting is that it tremendously simplifies spectrographic analysis of a recording: You get all the signal (all the “information”) in one track, as opposed to a complicated function of partial signals in two places. It means I’m focused on the bird, as opposed to surrounding sounds-of which there were several. What’s going on? Since I’m using the zoom (“shotgun” or “mono”) option on the LS-10, the two tracks are identical. The first thing to notice is that I’m showing just a single track (or “channel”), whereas the Audacity output shows two tracks. Here’s the sound spectrogram of the entire, unedited file: We’ll continue now with a real example, a Lark Sparrow I recorded on Friday afternoon, in Las Animas County, Colorado. It’s the same way with a photo of a rare bird: Sure, it’s fine to clean it up (sharpen the contrast or bring out the earth tones, crop out an ugly building or clone out a twig, etc.), but the records committee most likely wants the original, unaltered image. Second, if the sound file constitutes proof of a rare or otherwise notable bird, you want evidence that hasn’t been tampered with.
First, you never know when there will be something of interest lurking somewhere in the sound file I’ve several times had the experience of discovering something notable only after going back and listening to the recording on the computer. Now an item of housekeeping: Always keep the original, unedited, unaltered, undoctored, “raw” sound file. On my Mac, at least, the program occasionally crashes (no biggie, just re-launch), occasionally fails to open (more annoying, I have to reboot), and very rarely disables all sound on the computer (a headache, resulting in my having to reset the computer’s PRAM, which google). Let’s move on.įirst, I ought to mention three glitches with Audacity. And I actually like the parti-colored spectrograms generated by Audacity they help me discern differences in “volume” (technically, millipascals of sound energy) in a bird’s song or call.
Files edited in Audacity sound superior to my ears-smoother, less harsh, than files edited in Raven. I accept that Raven is the industry standard for birding, but Audacity is better suited to my needs. Edit the sound file. I’ll start off on a heretical note: I use Audacity, not Raven, for editing and displaying sound files. Click here to back up to the first part-an overview of the hardware you’ll need to get started.ĥ. This part is about software-editing sound files and then sharing them with other birders on the internet.
#Audify spectrogram how to#
Note: This is the second in a three-part series on how to record bird vocalizations.