Alternatives to Raven or Audacity for iPad? (1 Viewer)

[MiddleRiver]

Has anyone found a way to edit/view bird audio - which includes good spectrogram viewing functionality - that runs on iOS (specifically iPad)?

 

[njlarsen]

One or more of these might work: Best Audio Editing Apps for iPhone and iPad in 2023
Niels

 

[MiddleRiver]

One or more of these might work: Best Audio Editing Apps for iPhone and iPad in 2023
Niels

As far as I can tell, all the reviewed apps show volume-over-time as opposed to frequency-over-time. The latter is what you want to see in order to ID bird sounds.
Here's a Worm-eating Warbler using Audacity (free). Cornell makes Raven Lite avail (also free). In blue is volume (dB on vertical scale) and in gray is frequency (Hz on vertical scale).

I could be mistaken... Will admit in these days of audio birding, I would think someone would be doing it on an iPad - which would otherwise be very handy in-the-field!

 

[Mono]

Haven't tried either as I don't own any iOS devices but these do sonograms.

https://www.oxfordwaveresearch.com/products/spectrumviewapp/

Sonocord sonogram iOS App

Sonocord is an iOS app for recording sound and displaying the sound on iOS devices.

store.sinusoid.com

 

[njlarsen]

I have just started doing a little bit with sound using the Merlin app on my iphone. The way I process these is to export to a folder in Dropbox and then access the recording on a PC with audacity. I may be limited in my way of thinking in that an ipad for me is not for serious work .

You would have to spend time with more detailed descriptions of each of the option apps. Just because this webpage shows them with volume over time does not mean that frequency over time isn't an option. I believe you had to actively chose that in preferences in audacity on download!
Niels

 

[MiddleRiver]

I have just started doing a little bit with sound using the Merlin app on my iphone. The way I process these is to export to a folder in Dropbox and then access the recording on a PC with audacity. I may be limited in my way of thinking in that an ipad for me is not for serious work .

You would have to spend time with more detailed descriptions of each of the option apps. Just because this webpage shows them with volume over time does not mean that frequency over time isn't an option. I believe you had to actively chose that in preferences in audacity on download!
Niels

Yes, yes, and yes... except for the bit about iPad and serious work ;-)

The iPad - in terms of stylus, battery life, form-factor, etc. - makes a fabulous travel data-device. As someone mentioned in my other iPad thread, it also is great for kindle or PDF guides, books etc., photo editing, drawing, etc. I have a big and heavy laptop and would love to move to an iPad for when travelling/mobile. Sadly, none of the apps, as far as I can tell, are very good at showing me the spectrogram in the same fashion as Audacity/Raven. You are right though, I might just need to dig deeper. Alternatively I guess I could edit in a regular WAV editor and then play it back (audio) to my phone

Apple-world can be frustrating... As far as I can tell the app Mono suggested only reads files from Soundcloud or iTunes. I just want to move files with an SD card or be able to email/upload them.

 

[njlarsen]

Where does your recordings come from? What is your actual need for editing?

In some recording apps, you can upload directly to dropbox which is my tool for moving things across from ios to windows or the other way to some extent.
Niels

 

[MiddleRiver]

Where does your recordings come from? What is your actual need for editing?

In some recording apps, you can upload directly to dropbox which is my tool for moving things across from ios to windows or the other way to some extent.
Niels

The assumption is I don't always have 'cloud' (internet connection). The need is for travel mostly. At home I have a PC workstation.

I'm birding and I use Merlin or other iOS recording app on phone. Or I use my little Tascam recorder. Typically I get home, move files via SD card onto laptop, open in Audacity, hunt for bird-of-interest, filter extreme low end, amplify, export snip to file with bird name, date, location. If needed for 'supporting media' I might upload to eBird. Or I might go through the exercise so I can compare the recording to known library recordings in effort to confirm what I think I saw. Often the recordings are multiple birds, some very faint, and the only way to use the 'data' is to massage it a bit.

Now repeat above, but while off-grid, or just travelling where I didn't want to lug my 17" heavy, big, laptop. If traveling by air, even less so. I'd like to be able to do most of that with iPad or small tablet. An added plus of course is being able to start culling and editing pics, or just enlarging them to aid in ID.

Kind of like photographs. I just got in from looking at a pond at dusk in order to find a (rare to us) Phalarope. I wanted to confirm the other birds (were there also some Lesser Yellowlegs or Solitary Sandpipers? Semi-palmated or a Least?) so I get home and enlarge and adjust photos, so I can confirm what I believe I glassed with bins. Ditto if I was travelling, I would want a tablet/pad to do that on.

Call it my birding 'workflow'

 

[njlarsen]

Do you already own the ipad? if not, a windows tablet might do the trick because you could use the same apps you are used to (audacity etc.)

A discussion I saw stated that you would not be able to get a free app for the ipad with similar features as Audacity. To go there you would need a full featured, paid version.
Niels

 

[MiddleRiver]

Do you already own the ipad? if not, a windows tablet might do the trick because you could use the same apps you are used to (audacity etc.)

A discussion I saw stated that you would not be able to get a free app for the ipad with similar features as Audacity. To go there you would need a full featured, paid version.
Niels

I have owned iPads in past but don't currently. Thus my questions... The little XPS13 2-in-1's look nice but the price starts going up. Advantage is it's a 'real' PC where as you correctly point out, I can transfer all my software.

First world problems, I know

 

[BryanP]

For my simple needs I’ve been editing audio files in LumaFusion on my iPad since I have it anyway. I’d say it’s adequate but is a little more basic than LogicPro or Audacity. Unfortunately no spectrogram viewing as I recall. A feature I do like is once I‘ve cleaned up a video file”s audio component I can save it as a WAV file.
Apple is releasing a iPad version of LogicPro later this month but it’s a subscription pricing model.

 

[MiddleRiver]

For my simple needs I’ve been editing audio files in LumaFusion on my iPad since I have it anyway. I’d say it’s adequate but is a little more basic than LogicPro or Audacity. Unfortunately no spectrogram viewing as I recall. A feature I do like is once I‘ve cleaned up a video file”s audio component I can save it as a WAV file.
Apple is releasing a iPad version of LogicPro later this month but it’s a subscription pricing model.

Of course you know this is all at least partially your fault. Seeing your artwork made me want an iPad to sketch with ;-)

But the lack of an audacity-like-app is killing it for me. I don't expect all the fancy features, but some basic editing and spectrogram view are must-haves. For me...

 

[BryanP]

Of course you know this is all at least partially your fault. Seeing your artwork made me want an iPad to sketch with ;-)

But the lack of an audacity-like-app is killing it for me. I don't expect all the fancy features, but some basic editing and spectrogram view are must-haves. For me...

You’re welcome! 😉
Yeah, I’m surprised none of the iPad apps are including spectrogram viewing, seems a pretty basic requirement.

It’s a shame the Audacity developers don’t have the resources to build an iPad version but those open source developers have their hands full just keeping up with the desktop os’s.

 

[njlarsen]

The assumption is I don't always have 'cloud' (internet connection). The need is for travel mostly. At home I have a PC workstation.

I'm birding and I use Merlin or other iOS recording app on phone. Or I use my little Tascam recorder. Typically I get home, move files via SD card onto laptop, open in Audacity, hunt for bird-of-interest, filter extreme low end, amplify, export snip to file with bird name, date, location. If needed for 'supporting media' I might upload to eBird. Or I might go through the exercise so I can compare the recording to known library recordings in effort to confirm what I think I saw. Often the recordings are multiple birds, some very faint, and the only way to use the 'data' is to massage it a bit.

Now repeat above, but while off-grid, or just travelling where I didn't want to lug my 17" heavy, big, laptop. If traveling by air, even less so. I'd like to be able to do most of that with iPad or small tablet. An added plus of course is being able to start culling and editing pics, or just enlarging them to aid in ID.

Kind of like photographs. I just got in from looking at a pond at dusk in order to find a (rare to us) Phalarope. I wanted to confirm the other birds (were there also some Lesser Yellowlegs or Solitary Sandpipers? Semi-palmated or a Least?) so I get home and enlarge and adjust photos, so I can confirm what I believe I glassed with bins. Ditto if I was travelling, I would want a tablet/pad to do that on.

Call it my birding 'workflow'

Not directly related to your request but added here because you seem to be ahead of me on the learning curve. How do you actually filter against car noise (or other low frequency noice) in Audacity? I get confused by the description in the help section.
Niels

 

[MiddleRiver]

Niels, I’m far from pro but so far I’ve learned:

Noise reduction often leads to warbling, weird sounding effects in resulting audio. Must be used very sparingly…

Noise reduction is a two step process. First you select a section with noise you want to remove (just the noise so typically a couple of seconds or so). You can select sensitivity etc. and it pays to ’tread lightly’ there as well, and experiment. ‘Click’ on “Get noise profile“ button to have audacity read the noise complete selection of noise component. Then you have to select all the segment you want to de-noise and go back to the noise filter and select settings for sensitivity etc. and this time click on ‘remove noise’.

Assuming we’re talking editing for bird recordings, I do almost inevitably use a High-pass Filter. That allows you to set a threshold and fall-off (how quickly it fades out), below which frequencies will be filtered out. Phone field recordings in urban environments seem to have lots of 0-500Hz components and most birds are mid to upper range. If it’s a very noisy environment and I’m trying to ID a high-pitched bird, I’ll sometimes run the <500 filter first with higher dB set, and then raise the threshold to 1000 or even 1500Hz but with a low dB and more gradual roll-off. I of course check it and make sure I didn’t loose too much ‘bass’.

Lastly I’ll mention that if you eBird, they have some editing suggestions and generally the recommendation is to filter as little as possible. They‘d rather have noisier audio than alter or deteriorate the desired component.

Dunno if that helps? It’s hard to describe in words and I’m actually on new iPad - which of course does not allow me to open Audacity to look at the screens! Argggghhhh :-/. I went with iOS for size, battery life, and lower cost. So far I have not found a good substitute for Audacity, but I’m at least able to amplify and do some basic edits on audio, and then run it BACK through Merlin where I can look at spectrogram. Kinda silly, but hopefully good enough I suppose.

PS Raven Lite is the Cornell audio product (free) and similar but different than Audacity. I’m using the latter more, only because I know it already but Raven appears to have some interesting features. Worth downloading if you want to explore…

 

[njlarsen]

Thanks, I think the high pass filter is what I am looking for, I will experiment with that.
Niels

 

[njlarsen]

Did you find a way to have the high pass filter as a keyboard shortcut? Otherwise it is like three levels down in a menu ...
Niels