Full spectrum software?

[BitBatty]

Hi all

Being new to the full spectrum world, I was wondering what software you recommend for viewing / extracting call parameters for full spectrum calls?

pros / cons of the different options would be great :)

Thanks

A

[Chirop]

Hi,

I think you mainly have to choose between "SonoBat" and "BatSound". I have some experience from both. And it depends a bit on how you work, which one you will prefer.

Sonobat (www.sonobat.com, Joe Szewczak) has a suite of software including auto-identification of american bats. It is the on that most americans use. I use the "Batch Scrubber" to get rid of non-bat sounds. You can also get lots of parameters (different frequencys in the batcall) if you rely on them for identification.

Batsound (www.batsound.com, Lars Pettersson) is the one I use. Of course you can extract all important parameters, but it is more manual. Very much used in Europe. The interface is clear and very nice so you get very good spectrograms. See chiroptera.se/australia !

Hope this will help a bit.

If you decide to use Batsound, you can always mail me for questions and advice.

Stefan

[Anna McConville]

Hi all

 

Thanks for that info on more automated systems.

 

For free options, I finally found how to view sonograms in audacity – you click the little drop down arrow next to the file name and select the sonogram option. Zoom in and hey presto sonogram!

Also you can also use Raven Lite which has sonogram functions.

There are a bunch of other software that probably are good too.

 

Cheers

A

 

From: kilo...@googlegroups.com [mailto:kilo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chirop
Sent: Friday, 21 December 2012 11:10 AM
To: kilo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [Australasian batcall group: 15] Re: Full spectrum software?

 

Hi,

I think you mainly have to choose between "SonoBat" and "BatSound". I have some experience from both. And it depends a bit on how you work, which one you will prefer.

Sonobat (www.sonobat.com, Joe Szewczak) has a suite of software including auto-identification of american bats. It is the on that most americans use. I use the "Batch Scrubber" to get rid of non-bat sounds. You can also get lots of parameters (different frequencys in the batcall) if you rely on them for identification.

Batsound (www.batsound.com, Lars Pettersson) is the one I use. Of course you can extract all important parameters, but it is more manual. Very much used in Europe. The interface is clear and very nice so you get very good spectrograms. See chiroptera.se/australia !

 

Hope this will help a bit.

If you decide to use Batsound, you can always mail me for questions and advice.

 

Stefan

 

Hi all

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[Jonathan Ayres]

Hi All

 

I have used Batsound and Sonobat both are really good although can be expensive depending on who is paying for the licence.

 

Batbox also have a .wav based software program called Batscan, it’s basic and cheap; but useful, through a laptop it can be used for live monitoring via the mic or line in socket. You have to convert your files to wav so if you record to MP3 it’s fairly straightforward, with live monitoring you can use a frequency divsiondetetcor and save to the hard disk which is useful. http://www.batbox.com/batscan.asp

 

 

A new one I have been trialling is BatExplorer available from the Batlogger site. This is free and works really well, it contains a library much like Sonobat although of European species and can read a number of file formats. I have been using the EM3 and converting files via their Kaleidoscope software so they can be displayed with BatExplorer, you can also listen to Time Expansion calls as well as they are converted to audible range, it will also filter none bat calls, I haven’t yet worked out who to build your own reference library so I can start to use it Australian species. http://www.elekon.ch/en/batlogger/downloads/batexplorer-software/batexplorer-software.html

[Greg Richards]

Hi Everyone,

 

I have tried Sonobat but have recently started using Songscope which I purchased with a bunch 0f SM2-BAT’s from Faunatech.  The reason that I like it is that you can use the associated Kaleidoscope program which converts full spectrum calls to zero-crossing, with which I am much more familiar.  To me, this is brilliant because I can use the SM2’s straight away without having to hit the steep learning curve.  For some bats that are easy to identify from ZC, I can go back and look at the same call but in FS and start learning.  Songscope also has calls that can be labelled as different species and used as “recognisers” for batch processing and automated identification.  I’m not sure if it is the microphone quality on the SM2’s but the ZC calls are much clearer than in AnalookW.

 

Greg R

 

From: kilo...@googlegroups.com [mailto:kilo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jonathan Ayres

Sent: Tuesday, 22 January 2013 4:03 PM
To: kilo...@googlegroups.com

Subject: [Australasian batcall group: 17] Re: Full spectrum software?

 

Hi All

 

I have used Batsound and Sonobat both are really good although can be expensive depending on who is paying for the licence.

 

Batbox also have a .wav based software program called Batscan, it’s basic and cheap; but useful, through a laptop it can be used for live monitoring via the mic or line in socket. You have to convert your files to wav so if you record to MP3 it’s fairly straightforward, with live monitoring you can use a frequency divsion detetcor and save to the hard disk which is useful. http://www.batbox.com/batscan.asp

 

 

A new one I have been trialling is BatExplorer available from the Batlogger site. This is free and works really well, it contains a library much like Sonobat although of European species and can read a number of file formats. I have been using the EM3 and converting files via their Kaleidoscope software so they can be displayed with BatExplorer, you can also listen to Time Expansion calls as well as they are converted to audible range, it will also filter none bat calls, I haven’t yet worked out who to build your own reference library so I can start to use it Australian species. http://www.elekon.ch/en/batlogger/downloads/batexplorer-software/batexplorer-software.html

 

 

On Monday, 17 December 2012 12:26:31 UTC+10, BitBatty wrote:

Hi all

 

Being new to the full spectrum world, I was wondering what software you recommend for viewing / extracting call parameters for full spectrum calls?

 

pros / cons of the different options would be great :)

 

Thanks

A

--

[Vulturnus]

I've also been using songscope by Wildlife acoustics. It costs about  $500, in my experience its pretty simple to use except every thing opens in a new window so you can end up with multiple windows open which gets very confusing, but it has the great capacity to build 'recognisers' from known calls - so if you have a reference library you can highlight and label calls of species and then do a batch search through files for calls with matching characteristics.

Ive found this very useful - with qualification.

It takes a fair bit of work to build a 'good' recogniser (testing, tweaking settings etc)

Good recognisers can be really useful at identifying between difficult species  - eg in my area Vespadelus darlingtoni, regulus, vulturnus, Miniopterus schreibersii and Chalinolobus morio form a 'smear' of overlapping calls between c 40 - c.50 kHz - Ive build some good recognisers that over a sequence can very accurately ID each species  at c.90% success rate (tested on known data) - the problem I have found is that there is a 'trade off' between accuracy and generality.  I can get this level of accuracy only in the area where I collected my reference calls, if I travel not too far away then the accuracy falls down quickly - the recognisers seem to be too precise - (this is just for the tricky bats - 'easy' ones like Tadarida of C. gouldii stay accurate.)

 

What I have found most useful in Songscope is using my recognisers to automatically batch search call folders for similar calls and then using a manual ID (I look at each call to ' check' the ID) - say you have a target species you can easily use a recogniser to search whole folders full of calls that match its characteristics - very handy. If you want to do a general inventory you can also search folders for each of your expected species provided you have built a recogniser for the species.

 

I have also used Kaleidoscope to convert full spec to zca (recorded on em3) - its free you dont need to buy songscope- just download from WA website.

I agree with Greg, it creates very nice looking ZCA files from full spec calls (much better than the inbuilt ZCA files in the EM3 - which are frankly lousy) this is really handy for many of us in the process of straddling the zca/full spec divide...

 

Cheers

M

[Roger Jones]

Hi,

My favourite is Batsound V4.3 which is very fast for species one is familiar with, for more detailed identification BatExplorer is excellent giving measurements and the option of an Excel data printout, if you have a Batlogger detector (TE) then the GPS data can transfer to Google Earth and mapping, so for a project this option is excellent.  The European  species id is not good, in fact terrible L

Never got on with Sonobat although some friends only use this software.

Batscan L L it was ok ten years ago when i introduced it to Batbox, but it is cheap and good as a starter.

 

Cheers

 

Roger Jones

Church Cottages

Mountfield

East Sussex

United Kingdom

sero...@live.co.uk

 

From: kilo...@googlegroups.com [mailto:kilo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jonathan Ayres
Sent: 22 January 2013 05:03
To: kilo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [Australasian batcall group: 17] Re: Full spectrum software?

 

Hi All

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