Concord, Massachusetts, May 1, 2011 – Wildlife Acoustics is pleased to announce the general availability of Song Scope 4.0, the latest version of our bioacoustics analysis software incorporating these exciting new capabilities:
Song Scape — Powerful Visualization of Large Data Sets
Song Scape is a revolutionary new capability fully integrated with Song Scope that lets you visualize sounds on large temporal scales. This is like a spectrogram, but with the horizontal axis measuring months and years instead of seconds. The following screen shot is a Song Scape created from a season’s worth of Song Meter recordings. That’s 3,530 individual recordings and 67GB of data reduced to a single image! And that’s just the beginning. You can now easily index terabytes of data by creating Song Scapes.
Notice the two red bands of energy on the left half of the display. The top one represents vocalizations of spring peepers at around 3.1kHz from April 23 through May 28 of 2009. The lower band represents vocalizations of tree frogs at around 2.4kHz from May 18 through June 25. The visualization can be immediately changed to look at energy only at certain times of day. In this first example, the figure shows average sound energy present at 10PM when the frogs are most active.
The following screen shot shows the same data, but now looking at only 5AM when the dawn chorus of birds can be seen from May 28 through July 11 in the 2-6khz band.
By double clicking on a pixel in the Song Scape plot, Song Scope automatically opens one of the original recordings that contributed to that portion of the Song Scape. The data can also be exported for further analysis by other programs. In Song Scope 4.0, a Song Scape is represented by a “Song Scape Summary” file, or .sss file. The .sss file is first created with a set of parameters such as the desired frequency and temporal resolution. Next, recordings can be added to the .sss file in batches. In this step, Song Scope scans the recordings to calculate spectral parameters, automatically splitting or combining recordings to meet the temporal resolution specified. Finally, the Song Scape can be opened, manipulated and viewed, while new recordings can be added to the Song Scape as they continue to be collected from the field.
Improved Support for Bats
Song Scope 4.0 now handles triggered WAAC files created by SM2BAT more efficiently. When the WAAC file is opened, the triggers are scanned and efficiently indexed. The >> and << buttons can then be used to quickly scroll through the different triggered events.
nalysis and Measurement
Song Scope 4.0 now lets you analyze a selected region of a spectrogram. Just right-click on the selected region and select “analyze”. A pop-up window displays a number of parameters such as Vrms, Vp-p, and weighted mean frequency. We plan to add additional measurements in the future.
Bandpass Filtering
Song Scope 4.0 now automatically band pass filters the samples shown in the time-domain waveform view according to the selected frequency range, so you can actually see the waveform change as you look at different frequency bands. These filters are also applied during playback so you can easily screen out unwanted frequencies and focus on the band of interest.
Faster Scanning with Recognizers
With Song Scope 4.0, scanning batches of recordings with recognizers is now significantly faster to improve productivity.
New Playback Speeds
Song Scope 4.0 can now play back recordings at both faster and slower than normal speeds with many more choices available including factors of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 16. Playbacks are also now converted to a smaller set of standardized sample rates for improved soundcard compatibility.
Other Changes
There are some other minor improvements from older versions of Song Scope. First, the sample rate is no longer inherited from a parent window. When you open a recording file, Song Scope 4.0 will default to the sample rate of the original recording instead of converting the sample rate to match that of the parent window. Second, the Y axis of the log scale waveform plots are now relative to 0dB full scale. This is a commonly accepted convention and inverted from prior versions of Song Scope. And third, all detector parameters are now in milliseconds.
Pricing and Availability
Song Scope 4.0 is available now and is licensed on a one-user, one machine basis for US$500 per seat. A free upgrade is available for customers who purchased older versions of Song Scope on or after April 1, 2010. You can purchase a Song Scope license on-line by following the “Order” link at the top of our website at http://www.wildlifeacoustics.com. The download is available for Windows, MacOSX, and Linux (x86_64 only) by following the “Downloads” link. Finally, a free 2-week trial is available at http://www.wildlifeacoustics.com/songscope_demo_request.php.