Reading Wav Files#
How does dBWav get the timestamp from the wav file?#
Most recorders encode the starting time and hydrophone ID of the recording in the wav filename. If dBWav recognises the format of the filename as valid it will use this as a start time, if not it will ask the user to input a hydrophone name and start time.
dBWav currently recognises filename formats generated by Ocean Instruments SoundTraps, Ocean Sonics recorders, and RTSys Sylence LP recorders.
My recorder filename format doesn’t appear to be recognised by dBWav. What should I do?#
Recognised filename formats
dBWav currently recognises filename formats generated by Ocean Instruments SoundTraps, Ocean Sonics recorders, and RTSys Sylence LP recorders.
If you don’t have one of these recorders or the filename isn’t recognised by dBWav, then we recommend converting the filenames to the soundTrap filename format.
For SoundTraps (as shown in the example wav files provided with dBWav) the filename format is [Hydrophone ID].[Date][Time].wav
File name example
For 67391511.190121162420.wav:
- Hydrophone ID = 67391511
- Date = 190121 (2019, January, 21st)
- Time = 162420 (hh
ss 16:24:20)
We recommend using an app to do this – for example https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/
What LVX Sampling Interval Should I use?#
The LVX sampling interval is determined by how fast the audio signals are changing (i.e. the time duration is of the sounds you want to characterise).
We recommend using a 1 second sampling interval, as this is okay for most sounds.
The exception would be if you want to pick out sudden impact sounds, in which case go for as small as possible (0.1 or 0.2 seconds) so you can visually see the impact events.
Note
A shorter time interval will result in bigger LVX files.
A sampling interval greater than 1 second does not conform to the standard (ISO 1996-2:2017) for percentile calculations.