Record sound

Aim

To record ultrasonic vocalizations to a data file which can be analyzed by UltraVox XT.

Prerequisites

nMicrophones are connected and selected for use in the Experiment Settings.

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Procedure

1.Choose Acquisition > Open Acquisition. or click Acquisition in the Experiment Explorer.

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The Acquisition screen opens.

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2.Release the animals in their test environments.

3.Click the Start display button to visualize the input signal.

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note  The Start display function does not record data.

4.When ready, click the Start recording button.

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5.To stop the recording, trigger UltraVox XT with the method specified in the trial control settings, or click the Stop recording button.

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Notes

nYou can record ultrasound for up to a specific time determined by the sample rate of your microphones. See Recording sound

nTo stop recording after a specific time has elapsed, in the Trial Control Settings under Stop acquisition choose After ... minutes and select the duration required. See Trigger start/stop recording

nTo start and stop recording at specific clock times, use UltraVox XT in combination with the Windows Task Scheduler. See Start and stop recording at specific times

nYou can also start and stop recording from external software. See Trigger start/stop recording

nIn step 3, check the signal amplitude. At this point the gain should have been already optimized. If not, see Adjust the microphone gain in UltraVox XT. If the signal is too noisy, the gain may be too high. If you do not see the animal’s vocalizations in the spectrogram, it may be that the gain is too low, or the microphone is too far from the animals, or that the animals do not emit vocalizations at all. See Factors affecting ultrasound recording and Eliciting vocalizations for test purposes

nNoise in the recording greatly affects the efficiency of call detection. It is very important that you minimize noise in your recording. See Experimental setup