Running Time:

74 min

Release Date:

May 2004

Recording Location:

Northumberland, Northern England

If you like this album,
we also recommend:

Dawn Chorus

by Geoff Sample

It is predawn in a woodland in northern England. Trees drip with a heavy dew from overnight mists, and we hear the last of the nightbirds; tawny owl and woodcock.

The first songbirds begin, and a cuckoo starts up somewhere in the distance. Gradually more birds take up singing until the soundscape is a mass of intertwined themes. The main chorus is heard from outside the wood - a surrounding sea of birdsong.

Once the full chorus begins to wane, we re-enter the wood to hear more spacious scenes with a variety of singers.

This album is presented as one continuous dawn sequence.

Geoff comments:

"Every morning throughout spring and early summer, a wave of birdsong surges around the planet ahead of the rising sun - the dawn chorus.

In the still, cool air of the early morning, sound travels well, and the males of all species broadcast their signature themes in a lust for life, to mark their territories and attract females.

The woods and gardens of Britain are a riot of sound, while most humans are still wrapped in dreams."

Download album notes

wildsong.co.uk

Audio sample of this album

1.

Robin

11.09

2.

Cuckoo

5.46

3.

Woodpecker

4.00

4.

Woodpigeon

3.08

5.

Sea of Birdsong in Valley

4.50

6.

Softer Acoustic - Blackbirds

4.44

7.

Linnet

7.06

8.

Goldfinch

6.08

9.

Dawn

10.01

10.

Garden Warbler

4.36

11.

Nuthatch

7.38

12.

Blackcap

4.53

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About the audio formats

Mp3:

Mp3 is a universal audio format, playable on iPods, computers, media players and mobile phones.

Mp3 is a compressed format, allowing smaller filesizes, offering faster download times and requiring less storage space on players, but at some expense to the audio quality. Many listeners can't really hear the difference between mp3 and full CD-quality audio, and hence its convenience has lead to it becoming the default option for audio.

Our albums are generally encoded at around 256kbps (sometimes with VBR), balancing optimal audio quality without blowing out filesizes excessively. We encode using the Fraunhoffer algorithm, which preserves more detail in the human audible range than the lame encoder.

Our mp3 files are free of any DRM (digital rights management), so you can transfer them to any of your media technology. You've paid for them, they're yours for your personal use without restriction.

Mp3 files can be burned to disc, either as an mp3 disc, or an audio CD after converting them to a standard audio (.wav or .aif) format first.

FLAC:

FLAC is a high-quality audio format, allowing CD-resolution audio. It is ideal if you wish to burn your files to a CDR, or listen over a high resolution audio system. However files usually require special decoding by the user before playing or burning to disc.

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a LOSSLESS compressed audio format. This means that it preserves the full audio quality of a CD, but optimises the filesize for downloading. Typically, file sizes of around 60% are achieved without any degradation or loss of audio quality from the source files at the CD standard of 16bit/44.1kHz.

Obviously the file sizes are larger than for the mp3 version - usually around 300-400Mb for an album, compared to 100Mb for an mp3 album.

In addition, you'll need to know what to do with the files once you've downloaded them. In most cases you'll want to decode the files to wav or aiff, either to import into programs like iTunes, or burn to CDR. Some programs will play flac files natively.

There is a lot of information about flac online (eg: http://flac.sourceforge.net/)