Sound Analysis
Downloadable Sound Analysis Tools
Beluga
Beluga is a basic sound analysis programme written in MATLAB for creating spectrograms and power spectra from sound files in .wav format and for extracting frequency contours.
The programme provides user control of spectral analysis parameters and can be used to measure temporal and frequency parameters of sound features. A simple peak-finding algorithm(1), an algorithm using spectral autocorrelation(2) and a cepstral analysis algorithm are included for contour extraction. Spectrograms can be exported in a variety of graphic formats.
- Download the manual (pdf)
- Download beluga (zip) – standalone
- Download beluga source code (zip) – uses wavread function from Matlab 2015a and earlier
ARTwarp
ARTwarp is a MATLAB-based programme for the automated categorisation of tonal animal sounds. It has been tested successfully for bottlenose dolphin whistles and killer whale calls(3), but will be applicable to any sound that can be described by frequency contours.
The categorisation algorithm combines dynamic time-warping(1) to measure contour similarity with an Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) neural network to group sounds into different categories. The programme provides categorisation details, as well as a reference contour representing the typical frequency shape of each category.
(1) Buck, J. R. & Tyack, P. L. 1993. A quantitative measure of similarity for Tursiops truncatus signature whistles. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 94, 2497-2506.
(2) Deecke, V. B., Ford, J. K. B. & Spong, P. 1999. Quantifying complex patterns of bioacoustic variation: Use of a neural network to compare killer whale (Orcinus orca) dialects. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 105, 2499-2507.
(3) Deecke, V. B. & Janik, V. M. 2006. Automated categorization of bioacoustic signals: Avoiding perceptual pitfalls. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 645-653.
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