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^® Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get the best results?

Read your Owner's Guide to learn about Song Sleuth's features and operations before you get to the field. Now you're ready to use these four digital detective tactics:

Pinpoint the songster's location. Locate the singing bird visually if you can. If not, you'll have to listen carefully and fine-tune what you hear. The trick is to keep tilting and turning your head until you locate the source of the singing.
Get as close as you can. Move as close as you can without disturbing the bird, between 25 to 50 feet works best. You may need to be fairly close to get a good signal, especially if your subject is a quiet singer, or if you want to single out one bird from a chorus, or if you're in a noisy environment.
Give the software more data to work with. Now aim Song Sleuth at the bird or sound and watch the display. As soon as there's a pause in the song, the display will update. Note the most frequent choices and watch the display as the singing resumes. Longer and more complex vocalizations give the software more data to work with and increase accuracy.
Play back and compare. Use the confirm or browse mode to play back pre-recorded birdsongs of the prime suspects Song Sleuth displays. Compare these with what you heard to help choose from among the suspects and confirm your choice.

Just how accurate is Song Sleuth?

Song Sleuth will display the correct answer among the three prime suspects about 80% of the time under ideal conditions:

Low levels of background noise
Strong signal from a close-by bird
Isolated signal from a single bird
Typical vocalization for the species

Why are results for some species more accurate than for others?

Song Sleuth generally recognizes the most typical vocalization for a given species. However, some birds have wide-ranging repertoires of different vocalizations, making identification quite difficult. For example, Song Sleuth identifies the Eastern Phoebe's regular, distinctive song nearly every time. And although the Song Sparrow's song is highly variable, its complex song patterns are so distinctive Song Sleuth recognizes its song easily.

The Tufted Titmouse is an entirely different story. The simple whistled songs of this bird are actually very difficult to identify. Not only do these simple whistles vary tremendously, they can also match parts of complex vocalizations of other species in the database. So while some individual Titmice songs will be identified accurately, others will not.

Why does Song Sleuth display "Rock Dove" or "American Crow" when no birds are singing?

You may find that Song Sleuth sometimes displays "Rock Dove" or "American Crow" when no birds are singing. That's because your digital detective is working to analyze every sound it hears and match it with the birds it "knows". Many noise sources, for example a gust of wind across the microphones, contain randomized energy concentrated at low frequencies. Likewise, the Rock Dove, American Crow, and a few other birds create similar sounds, thus the erroneous display.

Why does Song Sleuth display no birds even when they're singing?

If the signal is not strong enough to overcome background noise and make an accurate identification, Song Sleuth will ignore it. Song Sleuth will also ignore a very short vocalization, such as a single chirp, because there's not enough data for identification.

Why does Song Sleuth display 3 birds that sometimes don't even sound similar to each other?

Song Sleuth always lists the top three most likely matches to a song from the module, even if some matches are unlikely. For example, consider the photograph of Song Sleuth in action on our home page. Here, we are aiming Song Sleuth at a song sparrow (using the "Common birds of the Northeast" module), and Song Sleuth is correctly identifying the bird by listing it as the most likely choice. Eastern Towhee is a reasonable second choice because both the song sparrow and eastern towhee songs have short whistled introductory notes followed by trills. To the untrained ear, songs from these two birds may be confusing. The third choice, warbling vireo, doesn't sound like a song sparrow or an eastern towhee at all to our ears, but Song Sleuth finds it as the third most likely match because certain acoustic properties of the warbling vireo such as pitch overlap with those of the song sparrow. You can use Song Sleuth's "confirm" mode to play pre-recorded songs from these three birds to compare to the actual song you just heard and conclude that it was indeed a Song Sparrow.

Can I increase Song Sleuth's range?

The ideal range for Song Sleuth's unique internal microphone is 25 to 50 feet. If you can't get close enough to your target or want to increase the effective range of Song Sleuth, you can use an external directional microphone such as a large parabola or long shotgun.

Why an RS-232 serial port instead of a USB port?

We choose RS-232 to keep the price as low as possible for our customers. We may opt to use a USB port in future models. Meanwhile, you can use a third party USB-to-serial adapter that will work with Song Sleuth.

Do you offer free upgrades?

Absolutely. We're continually working to improve the accuracy and functionality of our software. As a Song Sleuth customer, you can download and install all available upgrades absolutely free for a full year from the date of purchase.

Copyright © 2005-2008 Wildlife Acoustics, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Wildlife Acoustics and Song Sleuth are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Song Scope, Song Meter and Digital Birdsong Detective are trademarks of Wildlife Acoustics, Inc. Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Apple and Mac OS are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Patents pending.