Via Taramelli 24 - 27100 Pavia - Italy

e-mail : cibra@unipv.it

SeaPro - Sound Emission Analyzer Professional

SeaPro is a software developed by CIBRA and AEST to make easy the realtime analysis and recording of bioacoustic signals in a wide range of frequencies and in different applications.

It runs on all Windows operating systems, from XP to the latest Windows 10, either 32 or 64 bit. It also runs well on Windows Virtual Machines hosted on Mac and Linux computers. It works on any CPU, including Atom CPUs.

The standard version allows to acquire 1 or 2 channels up to 384kHz sampling rate (max 200k on Windows XP, 250k and 384k on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 10 release 1703 and newer; in Windows 8 and early Windows 10 versions the limit is 192k)

SeaPro provides user sizeable data buffer for getting short audio snapshots and extended recording facilities for unattended recording in user defined time cuts. Any information/data saved by SeaPro is time referenced; when connected to a GPS through NMEAManager, all stored wav files are time and georeferenced.

Multiple instances of the software can be run on the same machine to monitor multiple sound boards or to provide multiple views of the same signals (a multiclient sound acquisition device is required for this task).

SeaPro can be programmed to record continuously, one file every 15, 30, 60 minutes, depending on the number of channels being recorded together, for a set number of hours, or until all available storage media are filled up. Files are time aligned at the beginning of each hour, and, in case of shorter files, at 00, 15, 30, 45 minutes of each hour.
One of the most important features of SeaPro is that all analysis parameters can be modified by the expert user to get the best compromise in recording, analyzing and displaying sounds in a wide range of different uses.

All the spectrograms shown on the CIBRA site have been made with SeaPro.

 

Main SeaPro settings:

 

Spectrogram size (vertical)        512 pixels / number of channels on 1920x1080 pixels displays
                                                   1024 pixels / number of channels on 2560x1440 pixels display
Spectrogram size (horizontal)  full display width (the size can be up to 5120 pixels spanning on two monitors)

Display mode          horizontal wrap 
                                (horizontal scrolling also available, but more stressing for the operator's eyes)

Sampling                 up to 384k samples/sec (200k/250k/384k samples allowed on specifc devices)

FFT size                  512 to 16384 (to allow big spectrograms and zoom factors up to 16)

Window size            16 samples to the FFT size

Window type            Linear, Hanning, Kaiser-Bessel or Gaussian

Scan step                 2 to Window size       

 typical: 256 to get more time resolution, 1024 to see more time on screen

Zoom mode              frequency zoom available on one channel or on all channels

File Size                   max 2GB: 30 minutes for 2 channels files, 15 minutes for 4 channels files (at 192k)
                                 NOTE: only 16 bit wav files are allowed

 

SeaPro can be programmed to zoom into very low frequencies (<500Hz) by using a low sample rate (8kHz) and FFT based zoom (16x); e.g. this allows real-time detection of fin whale calls. 

SeaPro is a completely stand-alone software, however companion programs have been developed to perform special tasks required to conduct acoustic surveys for marine mammals.

This SeaPro edition supports the Dodotronic UltraMIc192k UltraMic200k, UltraMic250k and UltraMic384, special ultrasonic microphones with integrated high speed 16bit AD converter and USB port. The UltraMic384k is also available with BNC connector to connect a user sensor. These microphones are great for recording ultrasounds up to near 90, 120, 180kHz (bats, rodents, insects....), depending on the model. The 192k and 200k models are compatible with Windows XP and latest versions (SEE NOTE). Higher speed models allow to cover all bat species, including horseshoe bats (Rhinolophidae). To know more about the UltraMic compatibility with other operating systems visit the Dodotronic web pages. 

WARNING NOTE: the Dodotronic UltraMic 200, 250 and 384 can be used on Windows 7, but they are not compatible with SeaWave and SeaPro in Windows 8/8.1 and early Windows 10 versions. They are fully supported only in the latest Windows 10 releases (version 1703 and newer).

The UltraMic doesnot require a driver, just plug in, run SeaPro, choose the UltraMic as input device, and set the right sampling rate!  The UltraMics work well even on netbooks and tablets with the Atom cpu.

To know more about the UltraMic compatibility with other operating systems visit the Dodotronic web pages.
 

The latest version, SeaPro 3, now in beta testing, provides up to 8 channels sound analysis, display and recording. Additional features are : recording on trigger, real-time frequency shift to make ultrasounds audible.

SeaPro is distributed by AEST and by Dodotronic.

A 30 days trial version of SeaPro 2 is available on request, write to gianni.pavan@unipv.it to receive the link for downloading the installation package. Custom versions can also be developed.
To evaluate the basic features of the software and the compatibility with your hardware system, you can alternatively download SeaWave .

For Linux and Mac users: SeaWave and the UltraMics work well in virtual windows under both Linux and Mac OSX (VMWARE and PARALLELS have been positively tested). Another simpler option is to use the CrossOver utility to "encapsulate" SeaWave/SeaPro and make it appearing as a Mac App.

SeaWave - Sound Emission Analyzer Wave edition

SeaWave is special freeware version of SeaPro developed by CIBRA and AEST to make easy the realtime analysis and recording of bioacoustic signals in a wide range of frequencies and in different applications.
Learn more about SeaWave here.

WaveRecorder - a multichannel simple recorder

Developed for the NEMO-ONDE Project this software allows to record up to 16 channels together up to 192kHz sampling rate. The main feature of this software is its scheduling capabilities, e.g. to record 10 minutes every hour for weeks and months.

Other software developed at CIBRA

NMEAManager       

This software receives NMEA navigation data from ship’s serial lines (or from ship network) and distributes $GPRMC strings by UDP to other applications running on the CIBRA cluster (SeaPro, AcousticLogger, OziExlorer, ArcView). In case the $GPRMC string is not available, it builds one using other NMEA sentences.

 

AcousticLogger

AcousticLogger is a software to assist in the classification and logging of acoustic detections. A number of predefined sound categories, tailored on the Mediterranean marine mammal species, but easily extensible to other areas, are assigned to keys on screen.

CatWav
This software catalogs all wav files in a directory to produce a listing in txt format; for each file it shows the information extracted from the wav header.

OziNMEA

OziNMEA feeds OziExplorer (a shareware navigation and charting package) with NMEA strings distributed by NMEAManager. The program also allows to place waypoints on the OziExplorer display. Waypoints can be set by the user or created automatically based on UDP messages sent by other programs, such as AcousticLogger, or other dedicated programs (e.g. EventLogger, or PAMLogger).

 

UDPMonitor

A program to monitor UDP ports and log to disk any received message. The program is used to monitor the data exchanged by different applications and also to provide additional data display and backup.

SeaProCommander
A program to remotely control SeaPro through an ethernet connection. It can control multiple SeaPro running on different PCs.

AudioGem - by NOVAGEM

A special software developed by NOVAGEM able to share sound devices on a network of PCs. It allows to monitor and record from multiple sound devices installed on remote computers connected thorough ethernet cables or wireless. Developed with the collaboration of CIBRA it offers great solutions for bioacoustic reseaerch.

AudioGemDAQ - by NOVAGEM

A new exciting software developed by NOVAGEM on the AudioGem platform to allow the use of National Instruments DAQ devices to record multiple channels at sampling rates higher than 192kHz. The great feature is that any software able to support high sample rates can get the data stream through a Virtual Sound Board. Developed with SeaPro in mind, it allows to see spectrograms in real-time and record to disk at sampling rates up to 500kHz and more.

This software replaces and extends the capabilities of the now obsolete SeaProDAQ developed by CIBRA nearly 20 years ago. With AudioGemDAQ you can just use SeaPro to see and record very high frequencies.

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Spectrogram gallery - Download the images to see them at full resolution.


A special thank to Marco Pesente for the valuable recording of bats (Pipistrellus kuhlii and Eptesicus serotinus - the lowest in frequency; probably a third species is also present...) made with the Dodotronic UltraMic200k.

Details (at different time resolution) and overview (compressed timeline) of a long sequence of calls to show the presence of two bat species. The red parts of the envelope show overloaded signals. 

The compressed timeline can be easily obtained by setting a long analysis window (e.g. 8192 or 16384 samples), this forces the FFT to the same size, and by setting the scan step to half the length of the window. A further packing can be obtained by setting the windows type to Linear and the scan step to the same size of the window.  

Samples made with the UltraMic250 and the new automatic recording software:

A sequence of bat calls recorded with the UltraMic250k, gain set to low.

A sequence of bat calls recorded with the UltraMic250k, gain set to medium. Horizontal lines are due to noise from an LCD monitor.

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