World’s largest natural sound archive now fully digital and fully online

August 6, 2015 11:29 AM

“In terms of speed and the breadth of material now accessible to anyone in the world, this is really revolutionary,” says audio curator Greg Budney (2010 NPR interview), describing a major milestone just achieved by the Macaulay Library archive at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. All archived analog recordings in the collection, going back to 1929, have now been digitized and can be heard at www.MacaulayLibrary.org.
posted by Going To Maine (15 comments total)

This is really neat!

For some reason, when I first read the fpp I kept skipping the word 'archive' and I was excited to find out what the world's largest natural sound was and how it's ornithological.
posted by clockzero at 11:32 AM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

At last, a searchable tweet archive!



[I'll show myself out].
posted by srboisvert at 11:40 AM on August 6, 2015 [13 favorites]

Related, I heard this neat story about whale song on the radio this morning.
posted by exogenous at 11:49 AM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

And there was much rejoicing among the world's ambient house* DJs.



* - is that still a thing?
posted by NoMich at 12:13 PM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Cornell's ornithology lab is totally killing it lately. They recently released Merlin, a bird identifying app that's just an amazing help -- at least for hobby birders like me and my family. (Sadly, North America only.)
posted by The Bellman at 12:35 PM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I mean actually that lemur's less John Coltrane and more Albert Ayler but

[this is good]
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:38 PM on August 6, 2015

The Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics is also online.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 1:00 PM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

These are all the sound effects I want (and want to NEED; realism is depressing).
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:54 PM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

thanks oneswellfoop -- I've been looking for a proper Bong Zing Crash + Zrit for some time now.
posted by philip-random at 2:09 PM on August 6, 2015

I don't see that there's a way to license these to use as samples in music. Seems like a pretty glaring omission.
posted by svenni at 2:43 PM on August 6, 2015

This sound of a crysalis mimicking a snake hiss when touched is great. (In Peru, 15 years ago!) As is this browse by taxonomy page.

Attaching a birdsong to a bird still remains an elusive goal. Looking forward to the day that user-submitted recordings can be matched with such catalogs. On the other hand, hearing a once-in-a-lifetime birdsong with NO CLUE about the species is a very special moment in life indeed.
posted by Twang at 4:16 PM on August 6, 2015

You won't believe what the Magnificent Riflebird does.
posted by unliteral at 9:10 PM on August 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is very cool, but the "describing a major milestone just achieved by the Macaulay Library archive at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology" is a bit misleading, I think. Isn't that blog post from more than two years ago?
posted by lollusc at 9:18 PM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't see that there's a way to license these to use as samples in music. Seems like a pretty glaring omission.

Probably, the licensing agreements between the archive and contributors of sounds don't include commercial licensing provisions.
posted by in278s at 12:31 AM on August 7, 2015

This is very cool, but the “describing a major milestone just achieved by the Macaulay Library archive at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology” is a bit misleading, I think. Isn't that blog post from more than two years ago?

Oops. Well, that’s on me. I suppose we should revise the title to Two years after the fact, someone on Resident Advisor posts that the world’s largest natural sound archive now fully digital and fully online.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:36 AM on August 7, 2015