I think many people are discouraged from uploading audio, because audio-only observations are identified at a much slower rate than observations including photos.
From the other point of view, many people are discouraged from identifying audio, because many observers don’t vet their audio as carefully as they do photos.
- Many people know how to crop photos on their phone/computer, but people are less familiar with audio editing software. So many people don’t edit their audio clips.
- Unedited audio clips are harder to ID than unedited photos. I can zoom in on an uncropped photo, but I am much more limited in my ability to normalize, amplify, etc. other’s audio observations.
- Audio very often includes multiple, sometimes many, species, and observers are lax about including notes regarding the audio of interest (i.e., describing the call of interest, but preferably listing the seconds where the call can be heard in the audio clip).
- Often, audio clips are cut too short. People are impatient and instead of including a 30 second clip where the vocal of interest can be heard multiple times, they upload a 5 second clip where observers cannot fully wrap their head around the sound before the clip ends.
Edit your audio! I use Audacity software. The cropping and normalize tools are worth becoming familiar with.