Full-Spectrum Recording Files

Acoustic recordings are saved as .wav files. This is an uncompressed audio format that is widely supported across many kinds of audio playback and analysis software. We refer to this kind of audio recording as full-spectrum to distinguish it from more limited and specialized forms of recorded audio data that are sometimes used when recording ultrasound.

Full-spectrum files record audio of all frequencies up to half the sample rate. Most commonplace audio files, like music or voice recordings, are full-spectrum files. If you open a full-spectrum file in Kaleidoscope Pro or another spectrogram viewer, you can see all components of the audio file across the recorded frequency spectrum.