On Mon, Nov 08, 2004 at 11:36:50PM +0100, derek holzer wrote: Great. Thanks to all for the pointers. -edrz

a certain jonathan segel <jsegel(a)magneticmotorworks.com> wrote: http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/soundfx/batsounds.shtml m -- --------___________________________ hear me here: http://www.mprims.tk

mik wrote: you (original poster, I don't have the first post anymore) might also consider other animals - small rodents, cats. Cats hear up to about 60kHz (that's what I remember, even if it's not the right number they hear a lot higher frequencies than we do), it was explained in the book I read that that's what they need to be able to hear the small rodents (so I guess small rodents emit sounds up to about 60kHz), plus cats use higher frequencies to communicate among themselves (that's why you only hear them doing the meow sounds when they are around humans). erik

What an amazingly silly (and fun!) thread... Well, obviously you're going to need a tried and true 'Bat Detector Pre-amp'... http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~bertrik/bat/preamps.htm What it appears he did was to use an audio range microphone and then tune the preamp to only amplify very high audio frequencies. I.e. - build a 100KHz pream with a high-pass filter at 30-40KHz... I didn't think you could have paid me to participate in this one... ;-) - Mark On Tue, 9 Nov 2004 16:26:11 -0500, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki <rzewnickie(a)rfa.org> wrote:

On Tue, Nov 09, 2004 at 12:27:18AM -0800, jonathan segel wrote: It may be a while. But since portability isn't a concern -- the bats fly around the back yard, and I'm thinking of eventually building a bat house so they'll hopefully take up residence[0] -- I might have some sort of semi permanent set up in the future to do this. The main thing it seems would be figuring out the most cost-effective microphone to use. Any suggestions? -Eric Rz. [0] gives me another idea ... one of the reasons I'm interested in attracting bats is to help control bugs since I'm also planning to eventually dig a pond for koi and lotuses in the back yard. Anyone have experience recording sound under water? Any particular transducers that work well? I know there are some sonar nerds around here. Anyone know if koi make sounds? -edrz

Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote: It's a normal undergraduate degree, at York University (in England). It'll be detailed somewhere at www.york.ac.uk. The Electronics department offer courses like Electronics with Music Technology, with Computer Science, with Avionics, with Media Technology, and so on. A few people always drop out, because they expect the course to be focused more on Music Technology. It's not that different from a straight Electronic Engineering degree, just with a few hours a week studying subjects like: Digital & Computer Music Acoustics and Psychoacoustics Recording Studio Techniques Oh yes, and you get alternative projects each year, which cover the same electronics as the rest of the year, but in some musical way - like programming an improvising MIDI pianist in C, designing a hardware sampler in a group, using a DSP and FPGA. And also some recording projects (remixes, location recordings, etc). Basically, it's an Electronics degree though. Lots of difficult maths right from the start. Some fairly advanced physics. Lots of lectures, labs, and work. It's really meant to prepare you to be an electronic engineer, possibly working for a company developing audio equipment. At the York University Battle of the Bands, about half the entrants each year are just from the Electronics department. Although I guess that's not too surprising... In retrospect, I'd have been better off finding a degree in Computer Science with Music Technology. But they don't do that at York, which is: 1) A good University 2) A lovely city 3) Where I met my girlfriend... So I'm happy. Hope this helps Michael Nelson

Hi, While I agree that a volume of knowledge regarding GNU/audio stuff is already available online, for a newcomer it is too fragmented and incoherent. Furthermore, even if a single unifying resource existed such as the one you suggested, due to ongoing development in this field, it would require a significant amount of work to keep it up-to-date (and imho keeping-up a well-composed prose that could be used for studying something that is constantly changing requires a lot more work than verbally explaining them). Finally, not everyone is prone to learning just by reading and they require additional stimuli via lectures, assignments, and hands-on work. Hence, I believe that relying only on the Web content for the general educational purposes would not carry very far. Sure, it would work for the minority (esp. those who have mathematical/programming mind and are capable of learning programming in a particular toolkit just by looking-up API's) but for the broader population it would end-up being nothing more than a reference. As far as Website content being able to offer you the pace of learning that fits your needs, this in practice never works as it is in human nature to postpone that which is the least urgent. This would inadvertently lead to non-systematic learning and therefore mixed results. School programs impose assignments onto students for reasons other than grading, most importantly to stimulate student to work hard in order to master the given material. Best wishes, Ivica Ico Bukvic, composer & multimedia sculptor http://meowing.ccm.uc.edu/~ico/ --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.788 / Virus Database: 533 - Release Date: 11/1/2004

Hi Eric, First off, I must say I am very flattered by your interest in my opinion. That being said, I am sure that Stanford (CCRMA) has something like it as well as Eastman, University of Virginia, and perhaps even Columbia. Also many other institutions that do electroacoustic music do some open-source stuff albeit many of them do OS X exclusively. Apple enjoys strong patronage from the academic community even though it poses as an oxymoronic solution to those who seek true "freedom of expression" through use of their computers. In part, this is the case (IMHO) because OS X offers superficial ease of use coupled with eye-candy which is usually good enough for most people. Not optimal, but good enough. As far as my course is concerned, FWIW here's the short synopsis: The course will consist of a 2-quarter contiguous lectures that are split primarily into following topics: *history and importance of GNU *introduction to Linux *install/maintenance of Linux *categorical hands-on experience utilizing various audio-related software on Linux platform with the second quarter focusing more on the real-time interactive framework (major portion of the class) *various creative and practical assignments and/or projects That being said, I would not necessarily put much weight into my model and/or thoughts on this matter simply because I am not a person with lots of teaching experience nor was I one to pioneer such a teaching model utilizing GNU platform/software. Perhaps posing the same question to someone like Nando at CCRMA would probably yield a much more exhaustive and accurate response. The cost can be certainly very prohibitive and I completely agree and sympathize with you. FWIW I offer my class for 0-3 undergraduate or graduate credits. That way if someone wants to take the class but does not want to (or more importantly cannot) spend money on it, they still can participate in it by registering for 0 credit-hours and therefore not having to pay anything. This way I feel that at least on some level I am offering an avenue through which students can be exposed to the GNU/Linux and at the same time I am retaining some of the GNU doctrine by making it potentially free. Besides, considering the amount of money I will receive for this gig, let's just say that I simply do this for the love of doing it (of course with a hope that one day I will land a job that will finally enable me to support my family)... There are also other options which cut costs, such as the evening college classes (which I have considered if my proposal for this gig were to fail). This being my personal opinion rather than a known fact, it is my belief that this is where tutor's or teacher's guidance is critical. Online resources to be good enough to replace a need for guidance, must be extremely well structured and even then, they still only work for a fraction of the population. But the fact that they immediately offer tangential information via cross-linking is IMHO a double-edged sword: on one hand it offers unprecedented ease of access to the pertinent information, on the other hand it poses as an unavoidable distraction. This is why many of the books/lectures offer simplified explanations early on in the material so that the foundation of the knowledge is strong, something that is a critical factor for the successful mastering of the more complex material later on. There are, perhaps, ways of alleviating this issue by building a site that would function in two modes: as a reference, and as a tutor/learning tool. But that in itself would simply create even more Web maintenance headaches... I guess what I am trying to get at is that IMHO the best solution nowadays is to have both options available (classes and Web resources) and that way those who can learn purely from resources can do so, while the rest of the population can (in most cases) use the help in a from of a tutor/class. It's my pleasure! I just hope that you got something of value from my long ramble :-) Best wishes, Ico --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.788 / Virus Database: 533 - Release Date: 11/1/2004

Hi, I don't think that OS X is bad as much as I don't think WinXP is bad. Both are good OS's but suffer from some deficiencies as well as lack longevity (think: transition from OS 9 to OS X left many users frustrated and to this day Apple community is rather fragmented because of it). I don't consider a half-proprietary OS a competition to something that is completely free. Those two don't belong to the same category. Yet, FWIW if we consider the current market, according to the latest estimates Linux user-base rather comfortably surpasses Apple's not even including the users who install Linux on their Win and Apple boxes by themselves (which probably constitutes a relatively sizable percentage in itself). Please note that this number does not include silly statistics such as the number of Linux servers etc. Here I am strictly talking about desktop users. This cannot be it because when OS X just came out there was absolutely no audio software that ran OK (i.e. at that point Max/MSP required Classic and did not support MIDI rendering it practically useless). Still, many continued to purchase Apple computers for the audio studios for imho 3 reasons: NeXT nostalgia (NeXT always held a special place in the academia), unquestionable devotion to Apple platform, and most importantly due to fact that this was what was taught in school (students would simply invest in a platform that was being taught in classes). I met several students who came from the UCSD (which is another school I forgot to mention regarding teaching GNU/Linux) and unsurprisingly most of them were using open-source audio software and Linux because that is what was being taught at the school (and because it was in their opinion superior software to the proprietary offering -- I obviously share that opinion as well :-). In addition, to this day both WinXP and Linux have greater offering of software and much of it is likely comparable in quality. Finally, the vanilla real-time performance is not that impressive on Apple. It's ok, but not impressive. Most of the studies that reported the impressive latency on Apple machines involved just as much tweaking as it would on a Linux or Windows box. Hence, I believe the (1) fact that many studios already have Mac's (so the implication is that they are already used to its platform, while changing to a different OS and/or introducing new machines with different architecture would require time to adapt and would potentially introduce maintenance headaches, none of which is desirable by the faculty overwhelmed with their other responsibilities), (2) and the fact that the audio users are mostly unaware of Linux's abilities are the two key factors that impede presence of Linux in audio-oriented academia and which continue to drive Apple's dominance in this niche market. Furthermore, as a result no student is exposed to Linux and therefore whoever comes out of such environment will be likely a Mac-only user who, if they decide to pursue an academic position, will likely prolong this vicious circle by continuing to maintain an Apple-only studio. Best wishes, Ico --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.788 / Virus Database: 533 - Release Date: 11/1/2004

jonathan segel <jsegel(a)magneticmotorworks.com> writes: Usually, this is because of some problem with your PKG_CONFIG_PATH. There are lots of ugly environment variables that have to be set correctly for things to interact correctly with fink, darwinports, or self-compiled packages. That is one reason why I consider OSX an "adequate (not great) platform for open software". That wretched, non-standard mach-o load module format is another. ;-) -- joq