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My sound trap (Cheap)

Subject: My sound trap (Cheap)
From: "gkunk2001" <>
Date: Thu, 08 May 2003 00:27:17 -0000
For the last eight years I have been operating a sound trap set to 
capture bird songs. This trap operates in the western Catskill 
Mountains of New York. Recently my son has given me space on his web 
server so that I can automatically post the loudest recordings on a 
web page.
http://www.akwebb.com/gkweather/birds/

The hardware consists of:
1. Homemade parabolic reflector layed up with fibreglass and resin.
(17 inch)pointing away from a road a half mile away.
2. Radio Shack Mirophone element (270-092) replaced every two years 
if it needs it or not.
3. 9V battery replaced every three months
4. A cassette tape recorder set to record/pause used as a pre-amp
(broken recorders have their uses)
5. Ten Band Equalizer to filter out low traffic and plane noise.
(recently added and next to the computer the most expensive 
investment)
6. NoName Pentium 166 with NoName Sound Card.(the third computer to 
be banished to the woods)

Current software: a program written in Delphi running on Windows 98SE.

The WAV files are 8bit 22Khz 10 second samples taken every 5 minutes. 
Why? Because when I started eight years ago that was what my cast-off 
IBM PC could do working its little heart out. Since I am using these 
recordings to survey bird populations I decided not to change the 
sampling method. The current computer hardly breaths hard doing this 
and it operates a weather station at the same time.

Any other sound trap operators out there? Lets hear from you.

Many of the recordings of Ovenbirds are way overmodulated so hold on 
to your seats.

               Greg Kunkel
                  The Cheap Guy





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