My problem with bird songs on the Simpson & Day CD-ROM (version 3) is not
the digital format that has been chosen. They are stored as 8-bit 22050hz
WAV files. This is not CD-quality but is adequate for my purposes.
My problem with the Simpson & Day CD-ROM (version 3) is that an
elementary mistake appears to have been made transfering the songs into
digital format.
Apparently the levels were set incorrectly when digitising the songs so
the loudest parts of birds song were outside the range that could be
digitised. When you examine the waveform during the louder parts of
many of the songs the tops of the waveform are flattened. This is often
referred to as clipping.
The result to the human ear is a distorted or harsh sound. It also makes
the recordings much less useful for my purposes.
I have (and recommend) the BOC tapes but as Paul Taylor says, it would be
more convenient to have them on CD.
Andrew Taylor
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