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| Nature Sounds of Lamma http://lamma.com.hk/forum-OK/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=3978 |
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| Author: | Lamma-Gung [ Sat Apr 21, 2007 11:18 am ] |
| Post subject: | Nature Sounds of Lamma |
A new topic in this Flora & Fauna forum: Nature Sounds of Lamma (working title) Ever wondered what animal is behind those loud. strange noises you hear during the day or, more annoyingly, at night. Alan writes "A lot of creatures here are very audible, but hard to locate visually. If we could ID them by their calls at least we would know what to look for -- many times I don't know if it's an insect, frog or a bird." Let's start a little community project, collecting Lamma's nature sounds, obviously mostly mostly animals, but not necessarily limited to them. How about the sound of a soothing sea breeze, the fury of a typhoon, a rooftop party, frolicking at the beach, etc. Anybody is welcome to send me short sound files in any popular sound file format (mpeg, wav, mid, etc.) and I'll find a prominent place on this website to catalogue and make them available for everybody with a speaker on their PC or Mac. Sounds good? |
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| Author: | EILEEN [ Sat Apr 21, 2007 11:38 am ] |
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How about the sound of tables been thrown into the sea and stools getting kicked over and taps left running at 4am.  not to mention drunken rantings!
Have to say did not sleep well last night. I am not the one who was making the noise either I am the one been kept awake by it 
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| Author: | Lamma-Gung [ Sat Apr 21, 2007 11:58 am ] |
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Yes, why not! Did you record the sounds, even though they're not really nature sounds? 
Drunken rantings are so common, very easy to record as long as the "recorderer" is not equally drunk. But tables thrown into the seas seems to be a much rarer sound around Lamma and could be classified as a really exotic sound. |
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| Author: | F-X [ Sat Apr 21, 2007 12:08 pm ] |
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EILEEN {L_WROTE}: How about the sound of tables been thrown into the sea ... stools getting kicked over and ... drunken rantings!
Video might be fun too! |
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| Author: | Lamma-Gung [ Sat Apr 21, 2007 12:33 pm ] |
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Yes, of course! That's well in progress already for quite some time, in fact. Right this minute I'm just uploading the latest Red Star Rising video, professionally produced from their recent Wanch performance. I've got about ten videos already, just half of them are Lamma bands. They'll all go onto a dedicated "Lamma Videos" page which will be linked from the main navigation on the home page. Video submissions are always welcome for the Lamma-zine, this forum and the future Lamma Videos page. |
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| Author: | zep [ Sat Apr 21, 2007 7:12 pm ] |
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I'd be interested. There are some great bird song recording opportunities here, eg. recently at around 5 am a (presumably male) magpie robin was going through his repertoire of mimic calls, including passable impressions of a chestnut bulbul, a plaintive cuckoo and even (!) a white-breasted sea eagle - that last one was a pretty risky strategy in my opinion - his lady friend could have built up some false hopes and been seriously disappointed with the reality. The trouble is I don't know anything about equipment, techniques, etc, so any advice would be welcome. I have sent a couple of posts to the HKBWS forum asking for advice on equipment etc, but so far I have not had any response. So maybe Lamma.com could play a useful part here. |
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| Author: | zep [ Mon Mar 24, 2008 8:42 am ] | ||
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A bit early for Indian cuckoos yet (enjoy your sleep while you can) but I heard the first large hawk cuckoo calling this morning. I even managed to get a digital sound recording, which I now have as a .wav file. Does anyone have any idea how I can post this on this thread to make it available? This bird is easy to hear, but very difficult to see. This image taken by Martin Hale is from the Oriental Bird Club's site (see http://www.orientalbirdclub.org/)
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| Author: | Alan [ Mon Mar 24, 2008 12:13 pm ] | ||
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Sound files can get pretty big. Wave is uncompressed, if you convert it to MP3 you could get 6 seconds at 128kb rate, or 12 at 64 and be under the attachment limit of 100kb. I think most audio apps will convert to MP3. Just pay attention to the bitrate: higher rate= higher quality and larger size. You can use, eg BeSweet or find other tools at http://www.mp3-converter.com/ I've enabled MP3s to be attached, as this one. Just select and attach like an image. Size limit 100kb as for images.
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| Author: | zep [ Mon Mar 24, 2008 6:26 pm ] | |||
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Thanks, Alan. I found BeSweet a bit confusing for my un-savvy brain, but somthing else called Switch I found relatively simple to use. Let's try this: (picture Dave Behrens, Oriental Bird Club)
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| Author: | Alan [ Mon Mar 24, 2008 9:53 pm ] |
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zep {L_WROTE}: Let's try this:
Works for me. |
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| Author: | zep [ Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:57 am ] |
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Great - hope we can start up some wildlife sound recordings to go with the photos. Frog 'n' cuckoo season is just around the corner . |
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| Author: | zep [ Thu Mar 27, 2008 11:57 am ] | ||
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Let's try again - a snatch from one of the magpie robins coming into song at the moment. With the 100kb limit, the quality is not too good - only 48kbps. Any way of getting better quality larger files on to the site? For example, with photos, you can get round the K100 limit by connecting to a site like flickr and access larger files. Is this possible in the same way with sound files? 
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| Author: | Alan [ Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:12 pm ] |
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zep {L_WROTE}: Let's try again - a snatch from one of the magpie robins coming into song at the moment. With the 100kb limit, the quality is not too good - only 48kbps. Any way of getting better quality larger files on to the site? For example, with photos, you can get round the K100 limit by connecting to a site like flickr and access larger files. Is this possible in the same way with sound files?
You'd have to find a hosting site that allows MP3s. There are some, but they are likely to be shortlived. The music industry does all it can to discourage these. So a link is likely to be dead in a few weeks, or even days. Some people make Youtube videos, just using a still image, which is likely to be around longer. I don't know what encoder you are using, but they're not all equivalent. For MP3, you get better quality for the same size with mono than stereo. Also, you have used CBR (constant bitrate), you get better quality with VBR (variable bit rate). Audacity is good free audio editor, which can output MP3 using the Lame encoder, generally regarded as the best. CDEx is a very good, simple app for converting wave audio (and CDs) to MP3. |
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| Author: | Lamma-Gung [ Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:19 pm ] |
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Yes, certainly you can link any file that your browser can play from any other website, images, sounds, videos, whatever. The 100KB limit does not apply then, as the file is hosted on another website. For example, I've uploaded the Magpie Robin song to my own website, not the forum website, and you can simply click on the link below to play it inside the browser: This should work with most browsers, I assume. Magpie Robin song Typing the message, you'd use something like this to link a sound or video file, to get the link above. Any website can be linked like this. To simplify, there's a URL button at the top right of the message text entry window that will put the url code around any highlighted web address. {L_CODE}: [url=http://www.compunicate.com/Lamma/Blog/Sounds/Magpie-Robin.mp3]Magpie Robin song[/url]
<HR> If we get more than a few sounds, we can always put them on a separate web page or new topic in this forum to collect them in a nice and easy to find way. I'd suggest to limit the bird songs to well below 500KB whenever possible, as listeners will expect these sound files to download and play very quickly. |
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| Author: | zep [ Fri Mar 28, 2008 8:48 pm ] | ||
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Thanks for all the tips. What I guess we need is not really a forum but an archive. There are only 5 species of frog to record, but maybe a hundred or so different birds, so it might be quite large. Meanwhile, the Chinese francolins are in full voice on the hillsides. I've borrowed an image from Harry Li from an earlier page on this thread last summer. Here's a recording from Tuesday: 
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| Author: | zep [ Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:34 pm ] | |||
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Another of the magpie robins' evening chorus (picture from the Leisure and Cultural Services Department)
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| Author: | zep [ Sun Apr 06, 2008 8:33 pm ] | ||
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Anyone noticed the savannah nightjars recently? They are resident birds, but only call during spring, usually just before dark. They have been calling for a week or two now - they have a strange shrill "schweep" call - I'll try to get a recording but so far have been unsuccessful. However, the magpie robins have also evidently noticed the savannah nightjar's call. The males are getting pretty jiggy at the moment and have prominent and varied calls to wow the females and put fellow males to shame. This one was mimicking the nightjar's call and incorporating it into its own repertoire. After each six note phrase, the nightjar call is inserted (sorry those domestic pigeons in the foreground wouldn't shut up):
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| Author: | zep [ Sat Apr 12, 2008 11:30 pm ] | ||
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Seems like the females weren't too impressed by the nightjar impressions, so he's moved on to doing an impersonation of chestnut bulbul. The three note "pretty boy" phrase inserted into the call has exactly the same pitch pattern and timbre as the chestnut bulbul call.
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| Author: | zep [ Sun May 04, 2008 10:07 am ] | ||
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You'd have to be deaf not to hear the Indian koels calling during April and May. 
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