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Although most well-known for his plays and prose, the Irish writer Brendan Behan also recorded a number of songs, some of his own composition and others either traditional or written by contemporaries. His best-known recording, Brendan Behan Sings Irish Folk Songs and Ballads, remarkably captures not only his voice, but also his wit and distinct joie de vivre. The collection from 1960 includes not only the songs themselves (with Behan still in fine singing form), but also his introductions and wry comments on a range of subjects. The article looks at the circumstances behind the recording, the actual songs included on the album, and Behan’s ongoing commentary about a range of topics. The focus is on the first half of the recording which consists of songs from his play The Hostage, with an additional short discussion of one of his most well-known pieces, “The Auld Triangle,” which serves as an ongoing leitmotif in his earlier play, The Quare Fellow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Passively working devices (with no operator input) that register bat calls in real time are very important in conservation and environmental risk assessment, but data on their performance and limits under field conditions are mostly missing. We characterized the recording variability among three batcorders placed in proximate vicinity (ca. 10 m apart) to each other at 157 sites in Austria (central Europe). We found this variability perplexingly high, both for bat activity and species richness estimates. Specifically, the ratio of the highest to the lowest total sequence length (all species combined) was over fivefold in 23%, and over tenfold in 8% of the sites. In only 17% of the sites, we found the same number of species for all three devices - in most sites it varied between one and five species. The maximum call ranges of the recorded bat species affected the recording variability between the devices only for short ranges (5 m) but showed similar or relatively low variability for longer ranges. There was significantly less recording variability in sites with no woody vegetation present than in sites with open to dense vegetation structure. The results clearly indicate that the common practice of deploying only one device per site and night very likely leads to several of the resident bat species being missed and produces unreliable activity estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 3D-recording project was introduced into practice in 2014 by Tomsk State University during investigation of Timiryazevo burial site (5th-10th centuries AD). During the excavation, three-dimensional models of the whole archaeological site were made at each stage, as well as individual records of all artifacts. 3D recording was conducted by SFM technology. The data obtained was used for research and in work on the exhibition project "Secrets of Timiryazevo Burial Site: The Circle of Life and Death in Siberian Shamanism". The exposition centers on unveiling the meaning of the rite of burying lookalike dolls of the deceased, which was practiced by many indigenous peoples of Siberia. The exposition is designed to enable the visitor to pass through the whole cycle of knowledge extraction together with archaeologists, the "detectives of the past": from a bunch of strange miniscule objects found in the sand to reconstruction of the whole sophisticated rite of the "ultimate funeral" including the burial of the deceased's lookalike doll. The tools used to develop the topic included a stereoscopic video created with Autodesk 3D Studio MAX 2014 and displayed in the exhibition. Stereoscopic videos displayed by specialized museum equipment create a total participation effect, enabling any visitor to watch excavations step by step, in all their detail and from all perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Institute of Ethnic Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is in the forefront of efforts to record, document, and analyze the living oral traditions of Chinas ethnic minorities, including works in the epic genre such as the three heroic epic cycles, namely the Gesar epic, the Janggar epic, and the Manas epic. In part, thanks to personal contacts between Chinese, North American, and European scholars, the Institute's current research initiatives are formulated in close interaction with theoretical models known in the West. Moreover, these initiatives are grounded in a threefold "archive/base/network" approach to the living oral traditions of China as vital elements of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines the significance of capturing and/or editorially weaving a sense of sonic narrative within field pieces, whether that happens naturally during the recording process or is creatively constructed by the producer as artist. This discussion presents a theoretical and practical understanding of considering intentions and interpretations of field works in various contexts, including purposes for radio, sound, and other applications involving urban soundscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For field recordings and user generated content recorded on phones, tablets, and other mobile devices nonlinear distortions caused by clipping and limiting at pre-amplification stages, and dynamic range control (DR) are common causes of poor audio quality. A single-ended method to detect these distortions and predict perceived degradation in speech, music, and soundscapes has been developed. This was done by training an ensemble of decision trees. During training, both clean and distorted audio was available and so the perceived quality could be gauged using HASQI (Hearing Aid Sound Quality Index). The new single-ended method can correctly predict HASQI from distorted samples to an accuracy of ±0.19 (95% confidence interval) using a quality range between 0.0 and 1.0. The method also has potential for estimating HASQI when other types of degradations are present. Subsequent perceptual tests validated the method for music and soundscapes. For the average mean opinion score for perceived audio quality on a scale from 0 to 1, the single ended method could estimate it within ±0.33. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including the westernization of the gamelan elements in the music of Lou Harrison by Henry Spiller, an article by Samson Young on the mishandling of field recordings that served as the basis for "The Map," and the misrepresentation of Chinese contemporary music in Lang Lang's "Dragon Song."