Minnesota Howls-23 Minutes

[Guest DWA]

While I couldn't be more in agreement that one never assumes anything with stuff like this, the most prudent thing to do - and the sasquatch would be confirmed by now if we did - is to presume that eyewitnesses weren't lying or deceived, and that claims people make about what they are submitting for review are legit, absent compelling evidence otherwise.

To presume this was recorded at the wrong speed is dicey when the folks involved say this is what you would have heard with your ears that night.

Note that this does NOT absolve us from trying to ascertain the truth. You don't just say "these are bigfoot howls" even if these sounds are the ones the actual animals made that night, just as we hear them. The sasquatch isn't proven yet, so its vocalizations can't be said to be either. Just as with the Chehalis sounds, we may not have on record every sound of every animal we know about.

What I would say about this recording is this:

If these are the actual sounds, and if no sound known for a known animal can match some of them, then folllowup research at and near this site to accumulate other kinds of evidence seems to me warranted.

[southernyahoo]

While I couldn't be more in agreement that one never assumes anything with stuff like this, the most prudent thing to do - and the sasquatch would be confirmed by now if we did - is to presume that eyewitnesses weren't lying or deceived, and that claims people make about what they are submitting for review are legit, absent compelling evidence otherwise.

To presume this was recorded at the wrong speed is dicey when the folks involved say this is what you would have heard with your ears that night.

Note that this does NOT absolve us from trying to ascertain the truth. You don't just say "these are bigfoot howls" even if these sounds are the ones the actual animals made that night, just as we hear them. The sasquatch isn't proven yet, so its vocalizations can't be said to be either. Just as with the Chehalis sounds, we may not have on record every sound of every animal we know about.

What I would say about this recording is this:

If these are the actual sounds, and if no sound known for a known animal can match some of them, then folllowup research at and near this site to accumulate other kinds of evidence seems to me warranted.

The site says the recorder was placed and left over night, so we don't have any anecdotal evidence that it was heard by a witness. The guy who placed the recorder didn't know how to take the recording off the recorder and had someone else do it. (Jim). If it were a digital transfer it wouldn't have been necessary to divide the file up to transfer it. Dividing the file up afterwards would require some software on the computer though. Some Olympus recorders have different playback speeds when you hit play repeatedly. Yes that function is on Northernlights recorder. If the the capture off the recorder was done via analog cable and using the playback function on the recorder there is a chance it was rendered on the cumputer in slow play. I haven't heard from Northern Lights yet when I asked how this was done.Owls, canines and other animals all produce variable pitched vocalizations, so it is actually a good thing to have some insect noise or a near persons voice somethimes because these can be anchors against falsification and clues something is wrong. Recording on a cold night in the north is a soundscape void of these indicators.I'l have to check out the owl vocals, I seem to have missed them.

[Guest DWA]

Definitely not implying that anyone heard these sounds personally. If anyone did, people have dismissed stranger stuff as "oh, must have been...."

Is anyone involved in this a bioacoustics expert? That seems like a good discipline to have on hand.

[bipedalist]

The site says the recorder was placed and left over night, so we don't have any anecdotal evidence that it was heard by a witness. The guy who placed the recorder didn't know how to take the recording off the recorder and had someone else do it. (Jim). If it were a digital transfer it wouldn't have been necessary to divide the file up to transfer it. Dividing the file up afterwards would require some software on the computer though. Some Olympus recorders have different playback speeds when you hit play repeatedly. Yes that function is on Northernlights recorder. If the the capture off the recorder was done via analog cable and using the playback function on the recorder there is a chance it was rendered on the cumputer in slow play. I haven't heard from Northern Lights yet when I asked how this was done.Owls, canines and other animals all produce variable pitched vocalizations, so it is actually a good thing to have some insect noise or a near persons voice somethimes because these can be anchors against falsification and clues something is wrong. Recording on a cold night in the north is a soundscape void of these indicators.I'l have to check out the owl vocals, I seem to have missed them.

You're absolutely right SY, I used an old Olympus in some of my early stuff. Primitive and better than nothing, but soon upgraded to USB ready transfer.

[Northern Lights]

Hi all. I'm back in town and see that I have some work to do to reply to everyone and I promise once I get a few minutes to myself, I will. Having three teenage kids in various activities plus the normal 60+ hours of work haven't allowed me to get back to my favorite subject. Stay tuned to this bat channel and I will get to everyone. Thanks

[Guest]

Hello,

I'm Andy from the SRA. After years of wanting an account here but only having Yahoo email (not allowed on BFF), I was finally able to get on here.

Anyway, thanks to NorthernLights for posting these here and to the rest of you for your insights and commentary. We appreciate it.

Northern , you mentioned that you have a Olympus VN-4100PC recorder, but I seem to have missed what type of recorder was used in the original recordings here or how the recordings were uploaded to a computer. The site says Jim saved the files off the recorder after breaking the 20hr. file into smaller segments. Was it dubbed via a patch cable using the playback feature on the recorder or was it transferred digitally?

The audio was recorded on a Sony PCM-M10 recorder in mp3 mode. I'm certain that it was recorded at normal speed because Jim commented that he listened to the whole thing and at the beginning and end you could clearly hear Mike moving around the recorder as he started it and stopped it. Nothing was amiss with those sounds.

The reason Mike did not download the whole file is that it was 20 hours long and the download method was via USB 2 cable transfer from the recorder directly to the computer. The 23 minute clip we posted from this file is 70MB, the whole file was HUGE and would have taken days to download via USB. Jim used the software on the recorder to break it up into smaller files so that he could transfer them off of the recorder onto his PC via the USB connection in sessions without timeout issues. So yes, they were removed from the recorder digitally.

As for continuing research, Jim and Mike spent the whole summer recording and researching this location. They did get a few other howls, but they were far off and not as clear as these. One problem of doing research in this area, is that most of the land is private and the landowners are not very accomodating to having a lot of people trapsing about on their property. I should add that this was recorded in Mid-southern St. Louis County; I won't go any more specific than that as we are doing more research in the area in the upcoming year. We do hope to get back into that area around the spring thaw in case it is an area they move through seasonally.

Thanks,

Andy

[Guest]

The only thought I would like to add is this. Almost all of the sounds no matter how far or close they appear to sound, they all seem to decay similarly. This does not generally happen in an outdoor situation where the terrain is comprised of diverse elevations and various levels of acoustically reflective, refractive and absorbent surfaces. Also when I isolate many of the calls and look at averaged frequency spectrum analysis, many of the calls that seem to be volleying back and forth seem to be almost identical in frequency content. If you and I were to stand 300 hundred yards apart in the woods and try to belt out the exact same howls back and forth, they would be easily distinguishable from one another.

For any other studi nerds here....I used Cubase 6, WaveLab, SoundForge 9, and the RME Digicheck suite to spend some time with a couple segments of these recordings in a properly acoustically treated room with HD280's, a couple pairs of AKG's, and HR824 near field monitors.

In plain English. I'm not saying this recording is not authentic, but it does sound very much like a thick Hall Reverb program is applied across the board. Normal outdoor environments are going to have different decay rates. I didn't measure the decay times, but they do sound suspiciously close to some of the Lexicon Hall Reverbs. If I were to setup one of my good mics, and do a bunch of different howls, overdub some more, vary the volume a bit, maybe do a bit of pitch shifting with a good plugin like an Antares VST, I could possibly recreate much of this this recording quite well. Someone could have stuck a PA speaker outside and played these where they would broadcast quite a long way. I'm not saying this is what happened, but unless everything vocalizing and the recorders were in some sort of a long canyon, it's hard to get past the fact of the overly uniform decay to the various sounds.

Depends on whether you are listening to the file in it's true form. Most if not all the howls are from a canine in my opinion, and they are presented at around 65% of their "normal" speed.

As presented

2MinnHowls.wav

Speed corrected to what I think normal is.

2Minn.Howls@170%.wav

I think there was a goof in transfer off the recorder to a computer.

Although it wouldn't account for 170%, many small digital recorders record in 16 bit at 48kHz (the standard sample-rate used so recordings such as interviews can be synced to video). Most consumer home audio gear including many Soundblaster type cards only plays back at 44.1 kHz (CD quality sampling). A 48kHz recording played back at 44.1 kHz sounds unnatural in that it sounds slightly stretched and lower in pitch.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Irish73

[Guest FootDude]

Someone could have stuck a PA speaker outside and played these where they would broadcast quite a long way. I'm not saying this is what happened, but unless everything vocalizing and the recorders were in some sort of a long canyon, it's hard to get past the fact of the overly uniform decay to the various sounds.

Earlier in the thread I mentioned that this is the only way I thought this could have been faked.

Couldn't an acoustic analysis of the recording determine the locations where the different sounds are emanating from?

If all the supposed Sasquatch vocalizations are being made from the same spot then more than likely someone is hoaxing this by using a PA system of some kind.

Also a question for Northern Lights.

How well is this Sasquatch researcher 'Mike' known to your group?

How solid are his credentials?

[Guest]

FootDude, I doubt anyone could really determine which direction the sounds came from with any level of accuracy. The microphones appear to be small diaphragm condensers in a modified x/y configuration. The specs are a bit ambiguous though, they might just be cardioid dynamic mics. If we had a Google Earth map of the area, AND we knew precisely where the recorder was placed and exactly how the recorder was positioned, we may be able to pick out whether a sound came from one of two generalized directions by comparing the signal levels from each respective channel, but even then.....we would still only be guessing really.

That recorder allows for four different sample rates to be used and also has a digital pitch control onboard. I didn't read the manual, but I would assume the pitch can only be adjusted on playback, and not while recording. It's anyones guess what is going on here.

When trying to perform a forensic analysis of an audio file, having the original unedited file without it being passed through several different pieces of gear or undergoing lossy conversions is of vital importance. Consumer level and even "pro-sumer" level gear can do some strange things to an audio file because of the endless different standards and protocols for handling digital audio.

Anyone who has ever worked with a lot of digital audio equipment or even large mixing consoles can attest to this. ADAT, S/PDIF (several standards for TOSLINK and RCA), AES/EBU, all have their own protocols for digital audio, and this does not even account for A/D and D/A conversions. Is your equipment setup to deal with the professional audio standard for analog signal transfer which is is +4dBu (with 0VU=+4dBu), or are does your gear have the more common consumer -10dBV line level inputs? There is not a standard Digital reference level. A digital recorder might read -12, -14, 18, or -20dBfs when a +4dBu signal is input to it. This is somewhat necessary due to the variations in headroom of analog audio equipment. -14 is more typical for music recording, where -20 is quite common with video equipment. Confused yet?

It is very important to set your recording gear to use the highest possible Sample rate and bit depth available before recording, then make sure you transfer the digital file to an archive media that does not feed it through another audio interface where A/D & D/A conversions, or lossy digital compression schemes are taking place. I am going to post a new thread tomorrow to give people a sort of quick primer on how to setup and position their audio gear for optimal recording quality.

Edited November 28, 2012 by Irish73

[Northern Lights]

Also a question for Northern Lights.

How well is this Sasquatch researcher 'Mike' known to your group?

How solid are his credentials?

I will let Andy answer that since he knows him much better than I.

Irish-That is pretty impressive stuff. Well past my level of understanding and/or expertise. I can't even get my recording off my little hand held device, let alone figure out what you said.

[southernyahoo]

Hello,

I'm Andy from the SRA. After years of wanting an account here but only having Yahoo email (not allowed on BFF), I was finally able to get on here.

Anyway, thanks to NorthernLights for posting these here and to the rest of you for your insights and commentary. We appreciate it.

The audio was recorded on a Sony PCM-M10 recorder in mp3 mode. I'm certain that it was recorded at normal speed because Jim commented that he listened to the whole thing and at the beginning and end you could clearly hear Mike moving around the recorder as he started it and stopped it. Nothing was amiss with those sounds.

The reason Mike did not download the whole file is that it was 20 hours long and the download method was via USB 2 cable transfer from the recorder directly to the computer. The 23 minute clip we posted from this file is 70MB, the whole file was HUGE and would have taken days to download via USB. Jim used the software on the recorder to break it up into smaller files so that he could transfer them off of the recorder onto his PC via the USB connection in sessions without timeout issues. So yes, they were removed from the recorder digitally.

As for continuing research, Jim and Mike spent the whole summer recording and researching this location. They did get a few other howls, but they were far off and not as clear as these. One problem of doing research in this area, is that most of the land is private and the landowners are not very accomodating to having a lot of people trapsing about on their property. I should add that this was recorded in Mid-southern St. Louis County; I won't go any more specific than that as we are doing more research in the area in the upcoming year. We do hope to get back into that area around the spring thaw in case it is an area they move through seasonally.

Thanks,

Andy

Thanks Andy,

The only thought I would like to add is this. Almost all of the sounds no matter how far or close they appear to sound, they all seem to decay similarly. This does not generally happen in an outdoor situation where the terrain is comprised of diverse elevations and various levels of acoustically reflective, refractive and absorbent surfaces. Also when I isolate many of the calls and look at averaged frequency spectrum analysis, many of the calls that seem to be volleying back and forth seem to be almost identical in frequency content. If you and I were to stand 300 hundred yards apart in the woods and try to belt out the exact same howls back and forth, they would be easily distinguishable from one another.

For any other studi nerds here....I used Cubase 6, WaveLab, SoundForge 9, and the RME Digicheck suite to spend some time with a couple segments of these recordings in a properly acoustically treated room with HD280's, a couple pairs of AKG's, and HR824 near field monitors.

In plain English. I'm not saying this recording is not authentic, but it does sound very much like a thick Hall Reverb program is applied across the board. Normal outdoor environments are going to have different decay rates. I didn't measure the decay times, but they do sound suspiciously close to some of the Lexicon Hall Reverbs. If I were to setup one of my good mics, and do a bunch of different howls, overdub some more, vary the volume a bit, maybe do a bit of pitch shifting with a good plugin like an Antares VST, I could possibly recreate much of this this recording quite well. Someone could have stuck a PA speaker outside and played these where they would broadcast quite a long way. I'm not saying this is what happened, but unless everything vocalizing and the recorders were in some sort of a long canyon, it's hard to get past the fact of the overly uniform decay to the various sounds.

Although it wouldn't account for 170%, many small digital recorders record in 16 bit at 48kHz (the standard sample-rate used so recordings such as interviews can be synced to video). Most consumer home audio gear including many Soundblaster type cards only plays back at 44.1 kHz (CD quality sampling). A 48kHz recording played back at 44.1 kHz sounds unnatural in that it sounds slightly stretched and lower in pitch.

It was my perception that the decay was slow also, like being in a tunnel, maybe there is something to that and the processing or rendering of the file on the computer, but thats getting outside my understanding. Good comments.

[norseman]

I've spent quite abit of time in Idaho and Montana and this recording sounds like a group of timber wolves to me.

[Guest SquatchinNY]

Andy...you are Andy Peeper, right? From Finding Bigfoot?

[Guest]

I saw that previous posters mentioned Cool Edit Pro and Audacity. Those are both neat free programs although with a bit of a learning curve (though nowhere near the learning curve of some of the commercial products, ugh!). If any of you are interested, Cornell University Bio-Acoustic Research Labs have developed some multiplatform software that might be especially useful to some of you.

RAVEN: Interactive Sound Analysis Software

Raven and Raven Lite are software applications for the acquisition, visualization, measurement, and analysis of acoustic signals. Raven has been developed by the Cornell Bioacoustics Research Program, with the support of the National Science Foundation, to provide a powerful, user-friendly research and teaching tool tailored to the needs of biologists working with acoustic signals. Both Raven and Raven Lite run on computers running Microsoft Windows operating systems, Mac OS X, and Linux.

The "Lite" version if FREE! The link is here. http://www.birds.cor...du/brp/software

Edited November 29, 2012 by Irish73

[Guest]

Earlier in the thread I mentioned that this is the only way I thought this could have been faked.

Couldn't an acoustic analysis of the recording determine the locations where the different sounds are emanating from?

If all the supposed Sasquatch vocalizations are being made from the same spot then more than likely someone is hoaxing this by using a PA system of some kind.

Also a question for Northern Lights.

How well is this Sasquatch researcher 'Mike' known to your group?

How solid are his credentials?

Mike has been out with us for a few years. I think I first met him on the 2009 BFRO expedition. Jim spent a lot of time in the field with him last spring researching the area where these were recorded.

He's a quiet, older gentleman (60ish). He's not exactly the type who would perpetrate a hoax. He does have a few "interesting" theories and such, but on the whole neither Jim nor I have detected any falsehood in him. If he is somehow hoaxing us, it would have to be pretty elaborate and for no gain on his part that I can see. He'd also have to be a very good liar.

Anyway, if either Jim or I had gotten any wiff that he had in someway manufactured these sounds, we would not have put them on our site.

Andy...you are Andy Peeper, right? From Finding Bigfoot?

Yep, that's me. I'll be putting those recordings on our site soon.

Thanks,

Andy

Edited November 29, 2012 by MNBFHunter