Running Time:
92 min
Release Date:
June 2003
Recording Location:
Nagarahole National Park, Karnataka, India
View on Google Earth
The Sacred Forests of India - Nagarahole
Nagarhole forest has been described as 'The Jewel in the Crown' of India's national parks. Located in the verdant hills of the Western Ghats, the park is part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. Here, in deep forests of teak, rosewood and bamboo, can be heard a wealth of India's wonderful wildlife.
The dawn begins with swelling birdsong; Whistling Thrushes, Parakeets, Flowerpeckers, Mynahs, Jungle Fowl and Drongos all join a fabulously varied chorus. Sambar Deer and Langur Monkeys give resonating calls, and in the far distance, the source of their displeasure is revealed in the huge roars of a pair of Bengal Tigers.
Later we hear the tonal songs of Scimitar Babblers amongst a bamboo grove that rustles in a gentle breeze. A family of elephants pass through, swishing noisily through the dry grasses and communicating in low rumbles. As dusk falls, Coucals and Barbets call by a waterhole, along with the first of the evening's frog chorus. We conclude with a pair of Brown Hawk Owls heard in the jungle night.
Andrew comments:
"This recording was made in 2002, during our first field trip to India. At the time we received the support of the Indian Forest Dept, and were even allowed into the park's core area to record.
More recently we've heard from our friends in India that changing policies have severely limited access to the park, and that if we visited now, we would not be allowed into the areas where these recordings were made.
So we feel this is a very fortuitous record of a special place, and hope that ongoing discussion about policies in Project Tiger reserves achieve the aim of enhancing protection."
Remastered and Extended Edition
Our original recordings for this album contained many small imperfections, due to a combination of circumstances under which we had to do our field work.
At the time we first prepared the album, I cleaned up those minor flaws as best I could. Now, over a decade later, we have returned to our source recordings with new generation technology, and worked some digital magic on them.
We were also limited by the playing time of a CD. With downloadable files, that is no longer a creative constraint. This edition presents the complete recordings, unedited, so you hear events unfold naturally.
If you have purchased this album previously, this remastered version will replace the download product in your order history. If you purchased this album prior to our new shop, please contact us. The CD version of this album remains the original edit, and includes a 12 page booklet.
Audio sample of this album
Alternate audio link 
|
Remastered and Expanded Edition, 2014 |
||
|
1. |
Dawn at Nagarahole: pre-dawn... |
17.15 |
|
2. |
...first light... |
19.06 |
|
3. |
...dawn |
17.25 |
|
4. |
Bamboo Grove, mid-morning |
18.28 |
|
5. |
Elephants feeding, mid-afternoon |
4.08 |
|
6. |
Late afternoon |
11.45 |
|
7. |
Evening |
4.02 |
|
Original CD edit, 2003 |
||
|
1. |
Dawn at Nagarahole: pre-dawn... |
13.13 |
|
2. |
...first light... |
16.19 |
|
3. |
...dawn... |
15.53 |
|
4. |
...early morning |
7.11 |
|
5. |
Bamboo Grove, mid-morning |
9.26 |
|
6. |
Elephants feeding, mid-afternoon |
3.37 |
|
7. |
Late afternoon |
6.09 |
|
8. |
Evening |
2.51 |
View image gallery to accompany this album
Purchase this
album as:
Digital Album
(for immediate download)
Download this album
for as little as
$7.50 -
View Special Deals
CD
+
Free mp3 format
(Prices AU$, exGST)
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/)