Marty Michener wrote:
> 2. Cool always displays their spectra according to Kay Electronic's
> original format - frequency vertically, in linear format, and time
> horizontally, also linear. We all on this group have been asking for a
> pseudo-semi-log vertical scale, more like a music scale, where each OCTAVE
> is granted so much vertical pixels, rather than a fully linear form where
> each kilohertz is granted a fixed unit. Syntrillium has ignored this
> request, as far as I know.
I've not been much for using a music scale for nature recording. But I
do almost always use the log scale option in Spark XL's sonogram. Note
that it has fully adjustable scale endpoints, you can look at just part
of the spectrum in more detail. And this is certainly not tied to octaves.
There is a lot more to sonograms than this. I have found just how useful
it is to have your sonogram so that you can plug it into your filter
sequence where you need it to see what's going on in realtime. Most of
the time I just put a sonogram at the output end of the filter sets I
use, and then adjust the filters while checking the sonogram. Spark XL's
sonogram is highly detailed at it's max FFT size (4096). It is a fair
load on the processor to maintain that display as well as do all the
filtering in realtime. I cannot, with my 400 mHz G4 put in two sonograms
in the stack, the processor overloads. I can do that with my son's dual
1 gHz G4. It's much harder to bring that one to it's knees.
Many current sonogram generators don't do a good job. Often they try to
run at low resolution. To me a good sonogram program is going to
generate meaningful data for all pixels. One like that, particularly in
color and running realtime provides a huge amount of detail about the
sound. Clearly this is going to limit it to the faster processors. Or
eliminate the ability to do realtime.
> To restore some naturalness, I often select a part of the same recording
> with neither wanted nor unwanted species. I copy it to a new file. I then
> construct a filter manually that mirrors the removal filter ("B"),
> essentially generating a non-intrusive noise profile that complements the
> missing sound domain. I then mix paste correct length pieces of this
> shaped noise into the holes left by the morph filter, leaving a recording
> that sounds fairly natural, of only the "wanted" species sounds, all at
> their natural level, timing and frequency levels. [I am sure that Lang
> Elliott is shuddering, should he have read this far, but I hasten to add
> that MY purpose is only to instruct folks to learn about what to listen
> for, species by species, on my shoe-string budget, and is not to provide
> people with "natural" sounds, they might substitute for actually going out
> into the field.]
This is a very important point. The sort of filtering that's acceptable
to produce a call clip for learning is quite different from what you
would do for a track for just listening. I figure anything that turns up
in a call clip must be correct, but we can leave out a great lot to make
the call clear.
> I realize how difficult it is to describe or understand this tool without
> seeing and hearing someone use it.
>
> I have repeated posted to this list, how useful this tool is, and offered
> specific examples privately to numerous members, including exact
> screen-shots of how to use it, and so far, I think I am the only person to
> successfully employ it to actually "delete" specific noises, such as
> removing repeated blue-jay calls from a long recording of another bird. I
> am afraid that with most users, the mind just boggles at all this.
I would probably at least try it, if not happily use it, but for one
thing. I've read your accounts and it does not sound that hard. I use
macs, and am too much of a cheapskate to start outfitting the one PC in
the place with programs or sound gear. So I don't have the program. In
fact the PC is not used for sound at all.
There have been some similar things in Macs, mostly shareware, and more
toys than production tools. I try any I can find. Nothing to get excited
about so far.
There was one like the "edit a sonogram" style. Any graphic fed to it
would be converted to sound, any graphic. It also would output a sono
you could edit and feed back to it to get the sound. It was just too
crude in it's implementation to be useful. Very tough to predict what
your editing would do as it worked off color hue and saturation. It was
exactly a "edit a sonogram" style thing. You could have a lot of fun
feeding it random graphics. It treated them all like sono's. Some really
strange noises that way.
Walt
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