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Post Info TOPIC: Audacity Software
nhcrowshooter


Molted Crow

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Audacity Software
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Admittedly I am behind the times and still using some cassette callers, they are cheap and work great in the field IMO.  With my home stereo system I have the ability to record cassette to cassette and from CD to cassette and I keep 10ga and I supplied with fresh tapes as needed.  I have the Johhny Stewart Crow Call CD.  I never liked all the owl hooting in the Crow and Owl fight, I never liked the Death Cry at the start of Crow Come Here Call and I thought the gap between the 3 caws and raucus of crows on Come Here was too long.

Well yesterday I took the time to install Audacity software on my computer and spent a couple of hours playing with it.  I was able to copy the J/S CD to my computer and then edit the tracks.  I removed all the owl hooting and I cleaned up the Come Here track removing the death cry at the start and tightened up the dead space after the three come here calls.

I cut and pasted until I had 32 minute sound tracks for each (EZ recording on stereo to 60 min cassette), at the 29 minute point I pasted in the Come Here Call to the Crow and Owl track and the Death Cry on the Come Here track.  If I am using a J/S 512 that alerts me the tape needs to be flipped before it goes dead, if crows are in-bound when it changes I know I have about min and half play time.  When using a J/S 612 this sound change alerts me to push the button and change the direction of the tape for near uninterrupted playing.

Audicity is a pretty cool program. I saved my creations as WAV files and then used Roxio to convert the WAV files to CD-A and then used Roxio to burn a CD of each. The CD's can then be copied to cassette tape on the stereo.

I also saw that if I downloaded a program called LAME I could save my creations in Audacity as MP3 files, good for digital callers.

I am now looking into connecting cables from the stereo to computer so I can copy crow call cassettes I have to the computer, edit them and burn to a CD too.



-- Edited by nhcrowshooter on Friday 16th of November 2012 02:26:18 PM

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Splash One


Elusive Crow

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I also made the exact same changes to my J.S. sounds..  Also in the "Crown N Owl" fight there is a long high pitch scream.. this scream... IMO is the quickest way to educate crows that the calling is bogus... I removed every other one of these "screams" and hand call over top of the ones I left in.. as to "break up" the repetition of the recorded sound.. but I also keep the originals on my eCaller as well.

I highly recommend you clip the "death cry" and make it a separate sound loop.... that is by far the most realistic wounded crow sound I've heard on the market... also the hooting at the beginning of "owl n crow fight" mixed with rat/mouse distress is an amazing owl attractor.. can't hunt em but they are super cool to watch.. check out my Fun With Owls sticky..

 

If you need any help or have any questions I'm pretty familiar with that software and editing, converting, creating sound files.

Thanks for slummin with us brother,.... biggrin

 



-- Edited by Splash One on Friday 16th of November 2012 05:37:26 PM

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Gary


Dances With Crows

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Splash, even though you lost me somewhere between WAV files and Roxio, you are pretty damn smart. I think it is cool you can think it all the way through and then make it work. The A-Team uses just about all of Johnny's calls. Even though some of them do have extended pauses and longer owl calls they are some of the best to use. We kill the s--t out of them just like they are. I had my son-in-law download all the originals to a CD and then to my digital foxpro and love it. You keep playing brother you are on the path to vitory.

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nhcrowshooter


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A little more head banging today as I learned more about Audacity. I went to Wally World to get some more blank CD's and they had this neat portable audio extension cord system, an 18ft phone cord with all kinds of interconnecting jacks that allow you all kinds of connection options. It allowed me to connect a J/S 612 cassetter player to my microphone jack on my computer. With that done I was able to record and then edit sounds from cassette tapes and I made a WAV and MP3 recording of J/S Single Excited Crow. From there I can make an Audio CD and back to cassette tape if I want to. The sound is very clear. Now I need to round up all my J/S cassettes and digitize them. However I have 4 sounds that seem to be all I need. Crows Fighting Owl, Crow Come Here, Single Excited Crow and Death Cry of a Crow. I now have J/S sounds ready to go in any format needed, WAV, MP3, CD and Cassette.


 



-- Edited by nhcrowshooter on Saturday 17th of November 2012 07:43:56 PM

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Splash One


Elusive Crow

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@Gary - Just for the sake of hearing myself type I'll throw out a little explanation for ya,.....most forms of audio files are compressed to make the file smaller.. a .wav file is one of several uncompressed formats for digitizing sound.. for example a sound file with a .wav extension may be written like bbbbbbbbbbceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedddddbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbeeee a compressed version of this code would possibly be written like this b10c1e16d5b15e4.

Since the file is compressed the software you play it with is responsible for quickly and correctly decompressing, then playing the file.. or the software is written to just understand the compression and play the file as is.. this is why there are so many different types of digital compression for sound files.. everyone is trying to out do the other guy and create a cleaner, faster playing compression language and the program that understands it.. .mp3 is arguably the most commonly used compression language. FOXPRO even has it's own.. their files are compressed with a proprietary language so people can't change them to a more common compression type and give them to people that don't own a foxpro eCaller. Roxio is one of MANY programs that you would use to put your digital files on CD's and DVD's.

I feel the same as you when it comes to Johnny's sounds.. you really don't need any other sound files be they altered or original to repeatedly kill a crap load of crows..

@nhcrowshooter - sounds like you ARE ready..  when I first started using audio editing software ..the most frustrating part was chopping and creating a smooth playing sound file, with a beginning and end that doesn't create a weird section when the sound file loops...Once you get the hang of Audacity...check out an audio program called "REAPER"

 I have a VERY loud car stereo and when I would RnG an area I just put in my crow CD and crank the stereo.. haven't done that in years though. The eject button on my stereo stopped working and a Sean Mann goose calling instructional lives in there. LOL  

 



-- Edited by Splash One on Sunday 18th of November 2012 01:59:37 PM

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nhcrowshooter


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Splash, if I make a file with Audacity and I save as both a WAV file and an MP3 file the WAV file is much larger in size. Is there any difference in the quality of the sound of a WAV vs. an MP3 file i.e is bigger better or does it matter?

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Splash One


Elusive Crow

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Well there are a lot of variables that go into it.. for your situation .wav will be clearer... but just how much and if you'd even be able to tell is a bigger question.. what you really want to look at is the bit rate the sound was recorded at.. the higher the bit rate.. the clearer the sound starts out.. then as you compress the less clear it becomes.. and even when you convert from one file format to another some clarity can and usually is lost.. There are songs (usually nature relaxation recordings) that are recorded with such high end microphones that the raw data collected for a 10 minute sound bite fills an entire DVD.. there are also many music albums that are being remastered for DVD music...

Another variable to think about is.. if I pipe in a crystal clear recording... does my stereo and/or speaker have the ability to properly play the data the way it should be... probably not.. personally.. unless you are going to use a BOSE boombox.. I would just use MP3s.



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nhcrowshooter


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Splash I am burning the files to CD so that I can copy them to cassette for use in J/S cassette players. A 30 minute WAV file takes up most of a single CD, I can put a couple hours of MP3 files on a single CD. I am guessing the quality of the J/S players is not high end and the crows will not notice a difference between a WAV to CD or MP3 to CD. I think Audacity is recording at 32 floating bit rate.

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Gary


Dances With Crows

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Thanks for the explanation.  I would go near trying to do any of that myself but it is nice to at least know how the sounds get there and its quality.  You guys tape em and I will kill em, how about that?



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