Adjust the microphone gain in UltraVox XT

Aim

With the Gain function you can adjust the amplification of the signal from the microphone.

note  If adjusting the microphone gain in the software does not give the expected results, you can also Adjust the microphone internal gain.

Procedure

1.Place the microphones at the top of the cage, pointing down to the middle.

2.Click the name of the microphone you want to adjust, and then click the Settings icon.

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3.In the Microphone settings window, click the Start monitoring button.

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4.Results:

The Amplitude plot (top) and the Spectrogram plot (bottom) show the real-time values.

5.Move the Gain slider in such a way that the peak of the waveforms (almost) never cross the red shaded area of the Amplitude plot.

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6.In the spectrogram, the calls should be clearly visible, provided that the subject emits vocalizations. See Eliciting vocalizations for test purposes

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7.When ready, click the Stop monitoring button, then click OK.

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8.The current value of gain is shown in the Gain column.

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Repeat the steps above for the next microphone.

Note

UltraVox XT stores the gain settings based on the position of the microphone in the Experiment Settings. If you select a microphone in another position (for example, you select Microphone 2 in the first row under Microphone), UltraVox XT will assign the gain that was last saved for that row, and will show no error message.

nTo prevent confusion, always label microphones and USB ports, so you always know which microphone goes to which port.

nConnect the microphones to the corresponding USB port and click Refresh in the Experiment Settings.