When the dialog window opens, slide the green bar until it reads “-3dB” or select “Simple Peak, 3dB headroom” from the Preset menu. This is simple to do in WavePad, which has a “Normalize” command in the Effects menu. By setting the peak level of your recording to -3 dB, you’ll be creating a sound file that is consistent with the thousands of sound files archived in the same way at the Macaulay Library. Returning to our Swamp Sparrow example, we now have a sound file that looks like this:Īfter trimming the ends of the sound file, the next step is to normalize the recording so that the loudest sound from your target species reaches a level of -3 dB. If this is the case, you can trim the audio in the same manner as shown above. Loud background species can also overwhelm the target species at the beginning of a recording. So, we will instead create a shorter buffer that ends immediately after the handling noise, creating a clean one-second buffer before the first Prothonotary Warbler song: If we included a three-second buffer in this case, the loud handling noise would create problems with setting the level of the recording. However, there is some loud handling noise created by the recordist shifting the parabola shortly before the Prothonotary Warbler song: In the sound file below, the target species, Prothonotary Warbler, begins singing near the 5-second mark: In some cases, it is not possible to create a clean three-second buffer immediately before the first target sound. In our Swamp Sparrow recording, there are about eight seconds of additional audio that we will delete:Īfter trimming the beginning of your recording, go ahead and do the same thing at the end of your recording-look for the last sound from your target species, include a three-second buffer of ambient sound after that sound, and then trim any additional audio after the buffer. But if there is any additional audio before the buffer, go ahead and delete it. In a case like this, you should include this three-second buffer of ambient sound in the final sound file that you upload to eBird.
Looking at the waveform of this recording, we see that the three seconds that are highlighted are “clean audio,” with no recordist noise or prominent, potentially confusing background species. The first step is to listen to the recording, find where the first sound from the target species occurs, and then highlight the three seconds immediately before that sound:
Below is a single sound file, without any pauses, with five songs from a Swamp Sparrow: If you have a single sound recording that you’d like to upload to an eBird checklist, it can be prepared in just a few easy steps. With this approach, using the “Save” function will just make changes to a file that you have specifically designated for editing purposes. To deal with this issue, the Macaulay Library recommends keeping two copies of your original sound files (one on your computer and another on an external hard drive), and then making edits to a third copy. WavePad is a destructive editing program, which means that if you edit a file and then use the “Save” function, the file will be permanently altered to reflect the changes that you made.
#Sound wavepad audio editor how to
Continue on for a step-by-step demonstration of how to edit recordings for upload.
#Sound wavepad audio editor free
WavePad is a free program (paid premium version also available) that works well for editing audio recordings for submission to the Macaulay Library.
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