Audacity virgin (1 Viewer)

I have only done a tiny bit of recording of bird vocalisations, and finally got around to downloading and playing with Audacity last night.

So far I have concluded that the best way to reduce low-pitched background noise and isolate my target sound is by using the Effect>Equalization function. However, being completely clueless about sound recording I would be grateful if somebody can tell me if I'm heading in the right direction!

I would attach the WAV files, but need to figure out how to reduce their size (suggestionss welcome on that too!)

Thanks,

Dave

Have you tried a High Pass Filter for removing low frequency sounds? That's what I do anyway.

It might be easiest if you convert the WAVs into MP3s to attach here. They'll be a lot smaller.

Dave,
The oscillograms you have attached makes me suggest that you pay attention to a particular detail when you are recording. Make sure that your recording volume is not too high. This can happen if you are recording something close by or something with a very loud sound. I try to tune the volume so that max sound levels show about -12dB if I anticipate possibility pf louder sounds or at -6dB if something has a pretty steady sound e.g. a grasshopper warbler. If I am at an very quiet place I set my levels using my headphones and end up at levels of -50 to -70dB. This is when I hear "nothing". You can later in audacity boost the sound up to full maximum. If you are recording close to some rumble sound (traffic) you may want to use a highpass filter on your recorder. Occasionally I find it very useful. Experiment.

The wav files are always large, but as suggested by Andy you may want to export a selected region of the sound sample in mp3 and preferably with a sampling of 250 or 320bps. There is a mp3 plugin for audacity. Altough not mathematically exact to a wav it is quite close for most purposes. In photography tems like comparing raw or tiff to high quality jpg. And the saturation level (value -1 or 1 in the oscillogram) is similar to having burned out levels in photography.

Yes, in Audacity you can reduce the low frequency rumble in the way you suggested, but be careful not to throw out sections of the real signal.

Regards
Harry

thanks to both Andy and Harry for this - very useful comments. I will try to upload the mp3s this week to get opinions.

Best wishes,

Dave