Workshop 2 – Practical issues of bioacoustic recordings

When: Sunday 1:15pm to 3:15pm, Room 2.15, Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University

Organisers:  Michael Maggs, Frontier Labs

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The purpose of the workshop is to cover many of the practical and technical aspects of bioacoustic monitoring and how they affect your study. We’ll discuss deploying recorders, selecting sample rates and gains, choosing the right SD card size, environmental issues that could affect your deployment, understanding spectrograms, signal processing and the FFT and the effects of data compression.

Topics we will cover are:

  1. Recording Settings.
  • How far can my recorder hear? What is my volume of detection?
  • What gain should I use?
  • What sample rate should I use?
  • What SD card size do I need for my study? How can I get the most out of my recorder?
  1. DIY electricals
  • Using a multimeter to measure voltage and current of a system.
  • Sizing batteries.
  • Sizing solar panels.
  1. Environmental issues that can affect your deployment.
  • Heat, cold, pressure changes, water and condensation, UV damage.
  • Pests and biofouling.
  • Choosing the right batteries for your climate.
  1. Understanding signal processing.
  • Sample rates explained. What is an antialising filter good for? How does noise affect what I can hear?
  • Visualising frequencies (spectrograms and the FFT).
  • Sound attenuation in the environment.
  1. Data compression.
  • Can I use it?
  • What’s the best one?