Running Time:

65 min

Release Date:

August 2001

Recording Location:

Lamington National Park, SE Queensland

Australian Creeks & Waterfalls

This recording takes you to the Mount Lamington rainforests of eastern Australia. These are subtropical rainforests, quite different to those found further north in Queensland.

As the pathways through this rainforest wind into sheltered gullies and valleys, the sound of flowing water is everywhere, and we frequently cross streams where clear waters gurgle over smooth pebbles and past moss-covered rocks, or come upon water tumbling over small cascades.

Meanwhile, birdsong drifts from the surrounding forest - Golden Whistlers, Currawongs, Fantails, Logrunners, Thornbills, Gerygones, Fruit-doves, Robins and the unusual calls of the Green Catbird. Small frogs call from soaks on the forest floor, and cicadas sing from the forest canopy.

These are ancient rainforests, and hidden deep in the ferny understory we hear two species from early songbird lineages which still survive here. The first is the Noisy Scrubbird - seldom seen but well  named. The other is the rare Albert's Lyrebird (cousin of the more well-known Superb Lyrebird), found only in this Border Ranges region, who's mimicry and song echoes through the forest.

This album can be enjoyed for the relaxing ambiences of flowing water, but it is also a sonic portrait of a vibrant ecosystem.

Audio sample of this album

1.

The Source

8.32

2.

Song of the Waterfall

4.37

3.

Water Over Pebbles

9.49

4.

Distant Waters

7.03

5.

By a Mountain Cascade

7.21

6.

Chorus of Masked Mountain Frogs

4.07

7.

Flowing Ever Onward

16.00

8.

Final Waterfall and Leaving the Forest

7.36

Customer reviews of this album

"I just wanted to let you know how much I am enjoying the Australian Creeks and Waterfalls CD that I just purchased.  It's so peaceful.  I've always wanted to visit Australia and I don't know when I will get there, but at least I can pretend that I am there while listening to this CD. Thank you."
 
Nina, Oakland, USA

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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/)