Running Time:

104 min

Release Date:

December 2016

Recording Location:

Biebrza marshes, Poland

Morning Soundscapes from the Biebrza Marshes

by Izabela Dluzyk

Boundless expanses of virgin wetlands and marshes stretching to the horizon; almost a hundred thousand hectares of wild bogs and swamps - this is the valley of the Biebrza, one of the last untamed rivers in Europe.

The Biebrza still flows languidly in wide meanders, just as it has done for thousands of years. Each year in spring, its waters overtop the banks in a huge flood wave, creating life-giving overflow areas. This is a land of wild geese, cranes, beavers, red deer and elks, which has so far managed to retain its primeval nature despite increasing pressure of civilization.

Izabela Comments:

"This album contains recordings made during morning hours in the Biebrza Valley in May 2016, at the Dluga Luka boardwalk, the Barwik reserve and the Honczarowska causeway."

"The recordings have not been modified in any way, they provide a faithful picture of these locations. My wish was to capture at least a faint echo of sonic diversity of this beautiful, but at the same time extremely vulnerable place - a world of marshes and wetlands, which slowly vanishes into the past."

Audio sample of this album

1.

Sunrise at the Biebrza Marshes

39.03

2.

Aerial Displays

26.40

3.

Silence Full of Voices

12.47

4.

Soundscape with a Grasshopper Warbler

4.55

5.

Master of Improvisation

4.07

6.

One Flew Over the Sedge Warbler's Nest

2.43

7.

The Marshes Resound

4.05

8.

Noisy Songster

4.18

9.

Vigilant Presence

1.22

10.

Nightingale with a Blue Bib

3.41

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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/)