After last week=E2=80=99s discussion of ways to master birdsong, I decided =
to draft up a little app that would work like musical ear training, so I=E2=
=80=99ve made it available for download. It only is compiled for OSX for no=
w; I may be able to compile it for windows later.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8mshz1rd5k03nw/BirdMixer.zip?dl=3D0
It=E2=80=99s simple to operate but here are the details of making it work.
At the top you can turn on the bird track in the square toggle box, and add=
in tracks of water and wind which help with the overall blend and make it =
more naturalistic (since these particular bird files are not smooth edits).=
You can use the "open" buttons to loop your own background files (wav and =
aiff only). Levels are controlled just below so you can make your own mix.
On the left are the 3 controls. Density is the number of birds that will ap=
pear in any given time frame, so you can start with few birds and work up t=
o a forestful. Variety allows you to let in only some of the birds, and gra=
dually increase the species diversity. However, in the current implementati=
on, it is only affecting the files as they appear in alphabetical order (to=
p of the scale is all files included, bottom is only the first file). There=
are 28 files in the current package, representing 5 or 6 birds. They are j=
ust some placeholders to show how it might work. If people like this, I can=
start working on ways to read from any folder you select on your disk, and=
eventually to go to a source like xenocanto and bring web-based files into=
the mix.
The final control is distance. The birds are randomly placed into a 360-deg=
ree binaural field (put on your headphones!) and are random distances from =
your head in the center of the field. Top of the scale is entirely distant =
(you probably won=E2=80=99t hear them they are so far away!), and bottom of=
the scale is randomly from very close to the full spectrum of distance ava=
ilable.
The display on the right provides various indications of what is happening.=
The largest spectrogram is a composite of all the birds. The bottom five s=
how the last five audio files that have played, individualized to help with=
recognition. The filenames appear to the left as your verification of ID, =
though eventually I should be able to extract metadata and put more user-fr=
iendly data into this field. I can also make it appear on a delayed basis, =
so you can attempt your own ID before it appears,
The circular indicators show the direction in the binaural field where the =
bird was placed by the spatial randomizer.
Let me know if you like it and if you have any suggestions!
Thanks
Hugh
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