Hey everyone! I made a quick web tool for cleaning up audio observation files I wanted to share: https://normalizer.pages.dev/ If you’re like me, you’ve recorded lots of phone videos of animal sounds with the plan that you’ll later go onto your computer, convert it to audio, load it into audacity,…

One thing to note is that you probably want to include “audio normalized” or something like that in your observation description. I’ve recieved a comment on an obs from someone who was very upset that a birdsong recording I uploaded was normalized to -3db because most audio they were reviewing was n…

Good point! I’ll start doing that in the future. I always have the opposite experience, but on the other hand I don’t often mass id audio observations.

I always start out with volume lowered a bit when I play each recording the first time because you never know how loud it will be. I wish people would put time stamps if the call/song is not right near the beginning. Many times I have cranked the volume up trying to ID quiet (background) calls and t…

Similar to cropping photos for the subject, I think it’s courteous to try your best to make sure the observed sound is at the beginning of the uploaded clip and make sure it’s the loudest sound. A high pass filter does a lot for wind and car sounds; spectral delete is a lot better but also more fine…

[image] cigazze: I’ve recieved a comment on an obs from someone who was very upset that a birdsong recording I uploaded was normalized to -3db What a weird thing to complain about a birdsong… I’d assume any birdsong upload from a non-casual user will be at -3db since it’s what eBird requests …

Is there a reason .wav is preferred over .mp3? I guess what I also like about the other recorder is that it is a black screen with a big red button. I mostly ignored Merlin because it felt like cheating, but looking at it now, it is nice to see the spectrogram as I’m recording. I might have to try r…

I used this on my recent Baltimore oriole recording. I thought my recording was pretty good (from my Panasonic Lumix FZ-80 camera converted to mp3). This made it brighter. I could also hear the other birds singing in the area a lot better.

I know close to nothing about audio file types, but eBird prefers .wav, so I try to do .wav lol That said, why would Merlin be “cheating”? And cheating at what exactly? As long as you are not blindly trusting it and therefore documenting bad data, it helps a lot to give you pointers to go and comp…

I use Merlin as a tool to use to alert me to possible birds in the vicinity, to verify what I am hearing or as a small compact field guide. My hearing is not as good as a lot of birders in my area. So, it is helpful at times. I won’t use what I see on Merlin unless I see or hear the bird myself. Whe…

[image] Naelin: That said, why would Merlin be “cheating”? And cheating at what exactly? @Naelin I meant this as a personal thing, not a comment other people’s use of the app. I want to ID them myself. I do the same with iNat. I try to ID something myself (with memorized knowledge, books, and…

Quick and easy tool for cleaning up audio observations

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Quick and easy tool for cleaning up audio observations

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