List of Bioacoustics Software

From Help Wiki

Here is a listing of the most referenced bioacoustics software.
Two great resources on the topic of bioacoustics:

  1. International Bioacoustics Council
  2. Bioacoustics Journal



Bioacoustic Software Chart
Name License Platform Details Comments
Audacity GNU GPL v.2 {Linux, Macintosh, Windows} All around audio editing tool. To extend the analysis capabilities within Audacity, look at VAMP plugins.
Luscinia GNU GPL v.2 {Linux, Macintosh, Windows} Can record, edit, and manage files. Spectrograms of sound; database archiving of wildlife sound recordings; computational comparison of sounds, using dynamic time warping; clustering analysis; syntactical analysis of animal vocal signals; visual comparison of spectrograms. Written in JAVA. Since Luscinia can be configured with a database, it's well suited for large projects where file management can be an issue.
Pratt GNU GPL v.2 {Linux, Macintosh, Windows} For analyses only Though it is focused on phonetics, it is considered to be the best and most powerful acoustic analysis software in the bioacoustic community.
Raven Proprietary {Linux, Macintosh, Windows} program for the acquisition, visualization, measurement, and analysis of sounds. Developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. JAVA application. Ironic that the software is proprietary considering that Cornell received an NSF grant to directly develop the software.
Sonobat Proprietary {Macintosh, Windows} software provides a comprehensive tool for analyzing and comparing high-resolution full-spectrum Sonograms of Bat echolocation calls recorded from time-expansion bat detectors. Customized for bat songrams. Can identify species based on sonogram.
Sound Analysis Pro 2011 GNU GPL v.2 {Windows} Performs automated recording and analysis of animal vocalization. It can record, analyze and manage sound data over prolonged periods. Windows only. Has great documentation on how to use the program.
SoundRuler GNU GPL v.2 {Linux, Macintosh, Windows} focused on teaching acoustics. Can record and edit.
Spek GNU GPL v.3 {Linux, Macintosh, Windows} Show a spectrogram for simple analyses. Can export as [PNG] image file. Very simple tool to get quick information about an audio file. Nice export feature to image file.
Syrinx-PC Freeware {Windows} Program is specifically designed for field use for recording bioacoustics. Has basic analysis capabilities. Can be used to record/edit/analyze/manage. The software is no longer under active development --which shouldn’t necessarily deter it’s use. License isn't clear.
VAMP GNU GPL {Linux, Macintosh, Windows} Vamp is an audio processing plugin system for plugins that extract descriptive information from audio data — typically referred to as audio analysis plugins or audio feature extraction plugins. Used with Audacity.


Notes



See Also



External Links