Review of "The Bird Songs of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East"
Recently the German music publisher Edition AMPLE released two discs with bird recordings in MP3 format: "The BIRD SONGS of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East". Editors and publishers are Andreas Schulze & Karl-Heinz Dingler, 819 species have been included, 2817 separate recordings presented over 19h, 20m running time. The project is based on an earlier CD edition, comprising 17 discs; these are combined into 2 MP3 discs (illustrating the net gain of conversion from audio to MP3 format). Compressing audio files to e.g. 160 kbps makes it possible to store some 74 MB MP3 file (stereo) on a CD. Each disk from the original collection offered 65 to 75 minutes running time, after the conversion one disk runs for almost 10 hours. Single species MP3 tracks typically comprise between 200 and 2,500 kB. A 57-page pdf-document offers information about each species in English, German and French, it can be kept open and read simultaneously on a PC screen while the disc is being played. Songs and calls are presented on different tracks, allowing separate selection. The price is EUR 69,95. For details see: www.birdsongs.de
The MP3 format (MPEG-1) could be called the JP(E)G format of sound, it allows reduction of an "ordinary" audio file to some fixed size, chosen in order to comply with certain criteria for sound quality. With normal input frequency 44,1 kHz the current downloadable music encoders are capable of encoding to e.g. 128 kbits/second (kbps), in the case presented here the level chosen is 160 kbps (one step above medium quality); in recent years there has been some ambition to raise the music norm to 192 kbps or even more. (In the standard case this means that the audio file is shrunk to approximately 1/10 of its original size). Today the transparency is good already at 128 kbps; encoding means little deterioration of sound quality. The Swedish Broadcasting Corporation offers 97 kbps in its bitstream, but if you want to listen to e.g. Ireland's RTE, you are lucky if you get half of that in Sweden. Initially the MP3 format grew out of a European project (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and French state-owned Thomson Consumer Electronics), patent issues have lined the road of developers since the very outset. For this reason there have been endeavours to develop a separate, freeware format, much the same as Linux for computers. Ogg Vorbis is one such format, available since 2002. MP3 and Vorbis algorithms are not the same, discarding different parts of the original audio file. Today MP3 dominates by force of the enormous offer of music files available, but Windows has developed a "Windows Media Audio" (.wma) format of its own and RealPlayer "Real Audio" (.ra) in order to evade or reduce license fees. At any rate players designed for particular formats also play MP3 files today, and this state can be expected to last for a long time yet, so "Die Vogelstimmen Europas" is a mainstream project, playable on all platforms in some near future as well.
When it comes to it, the selection of species extends well beyond the territory indicated, a lot of vagrants have been included, making the whole collection something of a Pandora's box. The first disk (CD1) offers four Albatross species, four Petrels, five Storm Petrels, the seventeenth (CD17) concludes with fourteen North American Wood Warblers, Parulini, two Tanagers Thraupini and four Cardinals Cardinalini. CD4 contains seven species of Sandgrouse, CD5 features all small Sandpipers, Siberian and North American vagrants included, on CD6 the Snipes follow, and Rostratula bengalensis has been included. The vociferous Owls on CD7 have been given a lot of space, 3 - 4000 KB, per species.
Of course the quality of the equipment used for playback affects the sound quality in a case like this, the better the equipment, the better the sound - up to a limit set by the encoding. I first used RealPlayer, set to 160 kbps, and played Swift, Goldcrest/Firecrest and Treecreeper/Short-toed Treecreeper, picking the sound by way of two small external loudspeakers, powered only by the PC. The result was unsatisfactory. Next I powered the loudspeakers separately and as long as they weren't turned up too much the result immediately became satisfactory, and I can't and won't demand more from my everyday desktop equipment. Renewed tests gave excellent results with Grashopper Warbler, a somewhat overstrung River Warbler and a Savi's Warbler with a side-note of different frequency; but isn't that typical of the species? The differences between Iberian Chiffchaff, Canary Islands Chiffchaff, Mountain Chiffchaff and Siberian Chiffchaff can be studied with advantage, the different calls of Phylloscopus inornatus and Phylloscopus humei and the songs of Ficedula parva and Ficedula albicilla; it all sounds very satisfactory, and correct.
One single field-worker won't scrape together a collection like this on his own, and as a matter of fact the double-CD is a result of a large-scale editing effort, bringing together material collected by and from 152 contributors, among which i discern Jan Lindblad, Krister Mild, Sture Palmér, Sven Wahlström and possibly a few other Swedes. Claude Chappuis is given prominence to as a contributor from the "outskirts"; he lies behind recordings of three-hundred species from North Africa and the Atlantic Isles. It is not always necessary to travel from antipode to antipode, however; as often the recorder is likely to meet with variations and overlooked vocalisations in his own backyard. The two disks offer a lot of examples of this kind to play and consider; the Song Thrush (CD10) is represented with three song variants, the Redwing with four. I want to state emphatically here: all the time while listening I sat wishing for some specification of the geographical whereabouts of the particular bird. This want makes me suspect some sort of technocratical ambition for perfection behind the project - but I miss and wish to see the ornithological attention to detail! The Great Tit is, as could be expected, represented with twenty-one song variants - but why did the Willow Warbler only get two; and the Continent's Chaffinch four? And there is very little - or nothing at all? - of the rhythmical and variable "Crow's song" from the territory. I believe we see a manifestation of "the curse of common occurrence" here, the variation of Willow Warblers and Chaffinches and Crows between North Cape and Gibraltar, Limerick and Smyrna simply hasn't attracted enough attention.
Furthermore overtones and by-tones could be more connected with e.g. latitude (if there is a connection); the by-tones are excellently shown in four samples of Chiffchaff song, but isn't there more, and is there some difference between subspecies collybita and abietinus included? More details about the site of recording would be useful here. In addition I miss specific nocturnal calls, illustrating internal communication between sandpipers while foraging, as well as the "vocalisations", preceding departure prior to nocturnal migration stages; I want to see (hear) sounds like the muffled "o-ott" of foraging Knots, and the protracted, unison sequences of "drrrylll" just prior to nocturnal departure in Dunlin. Stating of sites would be helpful in such cases. I also doubt that anyone can identify a migrant Robin, passing overhead and calling, using these disks, a similar wish concerns the extended orientation calls of Thrushes, e.g. Blackbirds, migrating in darkness. Nor do I think that neither Moorhen nor Coot are represented by nocturnal calls, both species having unmistakable "tones of voice" and their presence being possible to conclude from informed conjecture, but I still think that the nocturnal flight of Coots over territorial waters deserves to be illustrated by one explicit example.
Concluding: a fantastic and very impressive compilation of high technical quality, easy to use and well-arranged. At the same time it may be "the start of something new" (and even better), above all I would like to see in some future specific nocturnal calls on separate tracks and dialects better represented, with information on the geographical origin for each single song track and for some calls that vary with latitude or longitude. If this necessitates a third CD - so be it!
Christer Persson