International Dawn Chorus Day 2020 is somewhat overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic for its human listeners. The birds probably appreciate getting some peace! The Wildlife Sound Recording Society was after getting a live broadcast of this from as many members as possible. They proposed two methods of live broadcast, their preferred option using Mixlr and a more gonzo alternative using locusonus.
Mixlr seems all about tablets and mobile phones. If a project’s got a mobile phone in it I’m not interested. I loathe smartphones – jack of all trades and master of none. They don’t do stereo1, FFS… Mixlr is Cloud. I don’t do Cloud, particularly if it comes with a subscription. It’s bad enough when Cloud goes AWOL and you’ve put effort into the platform for free. Pay for the privilege? Nope.
So I passed on that and went to locusonus, who are doing this under the Reveil soundcamp moniker. Locusonus is funded by the French State, bless their arty dirigisme – just look at their publications. And sponsors
Reminds me of reading about musique concrete as a kid in the 1970s, IRCAM and all that, while I was piddling about with a hand-me-down Stellavox tape recorder. Mad, but inspirational. I’ll hitch a ride on French exceptionalism.
I’m lucky in that way back when I bought a Cirrus Logic sound card for a Raspberry Pi. Or perhaps unlucky in another way – I never found a good use for it till now, as the software drivers were a whole load of hurt. By the time they got incorporated into Raspbian, the card was end-of-lifed so you can’t buy them any more. That’s Linux for you. Free as in beer but slow to integrate hardware. If you are doing this from scratch, either use a cheap audio adapter with mono audio or something like the Behringer UCA202 USB audio card – stereo line in and works great with the Pi, right out of the box.
Despite fiddling with the CirrusLogic on and off I came to the conclusion a timed bird sound recorder is better done with a Dribox and a real audio recorder and a timer. However, a Pi and the CL card is perfect for locusonus. Perfect enough, indeed, that downloading the relevant Pi SD card image, blowing it onto a SD card and firing it up on ethernet gave me an instant win2, using a set of OKMII binaural mics into the line in port with the bias enabled. I was able to hear myself, albeit at a low level, but the locusonus software lets you ram the Cirrus programmable gain amp up to +30dB and max digital gain. Sure, it’s noisy, but showed the principle.
Now all I need is an outdoor microphone Continue reading “International Dawn Chorus Day – getting bird sounds indoors without opening the window”