0405_boosted_2000_cut_exp.wav

This little bird returns every year, and every year he has learned new songs. I was very impressed today when I heard his new "samples". He mimics many different birds. His own song does sound like a cat meow, but he puts it in the mix of everything under creation.

Unfortunately there was a lot of noise in the neighborhood by the time I got the recorder ready. The original recording was made using my M-Audio Microtrak using the standard issue stereo mic. See 0405_boosted.wav for that one.

After boosting the level and editing out an extraneous click, I experimented with various combinations of high-pass filters, noise gates, and expanders in GoldWave. This version is the original after a hard (20dB/Octave) cut at 2 KHz and a pass through the expander with threshold set low.

It's fairly natural sounding. I'm not sure how much sound the bird produces below 2K, but setting the cut-off point any lower allowed too much background noise through. With a noise gate, this gets very strange, almost mechanical sounding.