A: This error occurs when SonoBat attempts to write to its “preference” file, the * .ini configuration file but gets denied from doing so because you lack write permissions to files in that directory. You can try changing the write Attributes of the entire SonoBat Suite directory. Select the option that comes up for “Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files” when you hit the Apply button after disabling the Read-only option for the directory. If that doesn’t work, Windows still has its security settings on high alert. You could delve into that, or use this work around:  Move the SonoBat Suite folder to another location, perhaps where you keep your SonoBat files. Fortunately, Windows should keep track of the program links from your start menu and everything should run fine with SonoBat in a new home beyond the “helpful” purview of User Access Control.

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A: SonoBat is optimized to display 8-second (or shorter) files. Longer duration recordings take more CPU time to process and render and especially to parameterize and classify, and depending on your computer hardware, files in excess of 10-seconds or more may cause the program to crash when displaying, scrubbing, attributing, or batch-processing. You can organize a folder of files by size, and take out the longer duration files to split into two or more shorter duration files using the “save zoomed section” tool. Then archive the longer duration recordings elsewhere, and only keep the “zoomed” sections in your folder.

A: Ideally, bat detectors should be able to recognize when a bat pass begins and ends and save an individual file that only includes a single pass. But bats are unpredictable and sometimes multiple bats will fly by a detector in sequence, generating longer than expected recordings with multiple bats or species. If your bat detector records files of a fixed length (like most Pettersson models), then select a “File Length” in the “User Profile” of no less than 3 and no more than 5 seconds. Other detectors are capable of making variable length recordings for as long a trigger persists in front of the microphone. Most of these detectors will use a user-defined period of silence after the last bat pulse to stop the recording. A 1 second period might be too short to capture complete sequences of bats with long inter-pulse intervals (e.g., western free-tailed bats or some hoary bat search-phase calls) so the period of silence (i.e., for Wildlife Acoustics models, a “Trigger Window”) should be set to 1.5 or 2 seconds. Wildlife Acoustics models and some other detectors also allow users to elect a “Maximum file Length” to stop a file regardless of the “Trigger Window” setting in the case of constant bat activity. This prevents recordings from being longer than a user-defined maximum, i.e., 5-seconds.

A: Standard view pulses can be selected several ways. With a call sequence displayed, simply select the turquoise “std view” button and a single call pulse from the sequence (usually near the mid point of the file) will be displayed. Or click one of the 10, 15, 20 or 30 buttons to the left of the “std view” button for a call pulse at one of those resolutions. To select a specific call pulse from a sequence to render in Standard View, use your cursor to draw a box on the pulse and press the “std view” button or one of the standard view resolution numbers. (The box does not have to completely enclose the call pulse when being selected from a sequence displayed in “compressed view.” When a sequence is displayed in “real-time view”

A: When learning qualitative bat call analysis, sometimes its preferable to display standard view calls without the automatic call trending and classification results. To change this, select the “set prefs” button in the lower right hand of the main SonoBat window and un-check “enable analysis mode when selecting a call in std view.” Then when a call pulse is rendered in Standard View, the parameterization and classification can be manually selected with the red “enable analysis” button below the main SonoBat window.

A: This typically happens on distorted, weak, or otherwise compromised signals that inhibit call-trending and are usually rejected from analysis anyway due to unacceptable call quality. And, although these distorted and noisy calls typically prevent a confident classification, SonoBat still attempts to distinguish bat calls from noise and tallies sequences with call regardless of quality during batch processing to facilitate counting total bat passes.

A: The notion behind the Standard View feature is to allow call pulses to be viewed at a fixed time scale so the user always views calls of certain durations at a similar scale. This aids in developing the “sight picture” or “gestalt” for the appearance of different call types from different species, supporting qualitative recognition. The “best resolution” e.g., 10ms, 15ms, 20ms, for a Standard View display will depend upon the duration of the call pulse. A call pulse with a duration that approaches the Standard View resolution may appear “clipped” (i.e., either the leading or trailing edge is truncated in the window when a 9ms call is rendered in a 10ms Standard View window). To correct this, choose a larger (e.g., 15ms) Standard View selection.

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A: SonoBat and its utilities can only handle files with durations typical of individual pass events. Most detector hardware will output bat pass duration files, .i.e., of 3, 5, or 8 seconds of duration or about 5–8 MB. If you throw bigger files than that at SonoBat it will likely choke with a memory error because of the processor-intensive work it does to interpret the signals at a high level of scrutiny. If you record in a way that produces files greater than 10 seconds or so, you will not resolve individual bat passes (i.e., such long files would likely have more than one bat pass). In addition to subverting activity counts of passes, that will also subvert the classification process that considers the strongest signal in any one file.

A: The design of SonoBat processing and its utilities optimize it to handle files with durations typical of individual pass events. And it considers each file you feed it as one event, and will only output a single decision for any file it processes. It is not designed to sort out the individual passes in a continuous recording- it leaves that up to the recording hardware. Most detector hardware will trigger and output individual files of bat pass duration length, .e.g., of 3, 5, or 8 seconds of duration or up to about 5–8 MB. If you throw bigger files than that at SonoBat it will likely choke with a memory error because of the processor-intensive work it does to interpret the signals at a high level of scrutiny. If you record in a way that produces files greater than 10 seconds or so, you will not resolve individual bat passes (i.e., such long files would likely have more than one bat pass). In addition to subverting activity counts of passes, that will also subvert the classification process that considers the strongest signal in any one file.

Before running any batch process, check the directory display of the files you put in that batch job, and sort them by file size to see if you have any large files. Some recording setups will sometimes deliver huge files.

Best to avoid generating large files not just because they choke SonoBat but also because they can have multiple bat passes in them and subvert the automated species classification and tallying individual bat pass events.

Best to avoid generating large files not just because they choke SonoBat but also because they can have multiple bat passes in them and subvert the automated species classification and tallying of individual bat pass events.

A: The outputs are located in the first directory of folders or files from the Batch process. E.g., if you processed files from C:\MyHardDrive\MyBigProject\Night1, C:\MyHardDrive\MyBigProject\Night2, and C:\MyHardDrive\MyBigProject\Night3, then the outputs would be found at C:\MyHardDrive\MyBigProject-BatchClassify.txt and C:\MyHardDrive\MyBigProject-BatchSummary.txt.

A: The tab-delimited .txt files can be opened with any spreadsheet program (e.g., MS Excel, or Numbers for the Mac). In this format the data can be sorted, filtered, or graphed to easily summarize ID classifications for reports. To preserve any of these edits and to make use of the full suite of spreadsheet utilities, the *.txt files should be saved as *.xls or *.xlsx (in MS Excle) or *.numbers documents.

A: On a Mac, navigate to the *.txt file in your finder window and select File —> Open with to access a drop-down menu with all software programs capable of opening a *.txt file and choose Excel. It will automatically pick up on the tab-delimited formatting and organize the output into a basic spreadsheet format. On a PC launch Excel and select File —> Open for the dialog box, then navigate to your project location. If the *.txt files are grayed out, you may have to specify “view files of *.txt type” or “All readable documents” in pull-down menu at the bottom of the open file dialog box. Click on the *-Batch*.txt file and the Excel Text Import Wizard will launch. Make sure that “delimited” is selected and select Finish in the bottom right corner of the Wizard window and the file will open into a basic spreadsheet format. On either platform, the file will have to be saved as an *.xlsx to preserve any edits, formatting, or other spreadsheet features used to organize your data.

Below you’ll find links to additional documentation and help resources. If you don’t see what you’re looking for please contact us directly. We’re happy to help!