Hi!
I have multiple bat recordings. Those recordings are in WAV, but as they come from bat, you can’t listen to them and actually hear them without having to process the sound first.
he software I use allows me to create sonograms of these calls, which can be used to visually ID bat species. However, this data is not “raw” data, as this would basically be just an image of the representation of the sound. So any scientist hoping to use this data could not.
I was wondering:
Should I import the raw data, which could have scientific value, but makes it impossible to ID unless specialized software is used;
Should I import the picture of the data, which makes it somewhat easy to ID, but useless for scientific use;
or should I import both?
Any ideas?
Adding both would be the best, that’s what people usually do, as sonograms are not evidence themselves, you could also add them to comments of observations.
Since iNat currently doesn’t allow to download sound files, nor generates sonograms, uploading ultrasound recordings wouldn’t make much sense (same problem with most katydid songs).
What do you mean? You can download any audio, right-click on play button and choose “save audio as”.
Real problem is mp3 won’t have much of what human ear doesn’t hear, so editing audio some way to make it audible would be preferrable, but just as a fact of it being real it’s ok.
Thank you, wasn’t aware of this. Then it would of course be useful to upload WAV files (and mention somewhere that they contain ultrasound that cannot be reproduced, and that they need to be downloaded and analyzed with special software).
I think you should add a sonogram of the call for sure since some people with expertise can ID bats from those.
For sound, obviously the original wav file would be good, but I’m not sure if iNat will accept a 96k wave file (or 192k wav file) without converting it to 44.1k during upload? I don’t know if iNat has a maximum sample rate it will accept without conversion?
You could also bring the sound down to within audible range so users can hear it (as a duplicate sound file). If nothing else, it would be more enjoyable for iNat users who like to examine records without having to have the ability to ID them. I did that here - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/3882056
Hi. I have uploaded a few of these echolocation records lately. I upload screen shots of the sonograms at different zooms and also add the .WAV file for any identifiers to use that have the appropriate software and expertise. It recently paid off for a few of my records: https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/122434330
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