Introduction to AnalysisPrograms.exe

AnalysisPrograms.exe (AP.exe) is a software package that analyses recordings of the the environment. This tool is designed specifically to work with long recordings that are collected by passive acoustic monitors.

The name, AnalysisPrograms.exe, is so general because we package a variety of different analyses in one program. AP.exe can generate acoustic indices, visualise indices, run event recognisers, and more!

AP.exe is over 10 years old, has more than 200K lines of code, and has done a lot of analysis on audio data. We estimate we've analysed over 100 years of audio data, totalling more than 200TB of files.

Philosophy

One recording, one analysis

AP.exe works on one recording at a time. This is a good choice for us because it means we do not have to write code or make assumptions on how or where your audio data is stored.

In reality you will want to process many files. Similarly, AP.exe very specifically avoids batch processing of files because we don’t want to make assumptions about how your data is stored or how it should be computed. This is important in universities that use PBS (Portable Batch System) compute clusters---assumptions in how data is processed greatly vary. The solution to batch processing is to script AP.exe. You can script AP.exe with any language you like.

Longer recordings are better

The majority of the recordings we collect are long: from 30 minutes, to 2 hours (our median), to ~6.78 hours (WAVE file limit at 22050Hz, 16-bit, stereo), to 24 hour recordings!

Analysing all the data at once is in efficient and requires powerful computers. Thus AP.exe breaks up long recordings into smaller chunks---typically one minute in duration---and results are extracted from each chunk.

AP.exe is very good at this and can even parallelise the processing of these chunks to increase analysis speed.

Constantly changing

AP.exe is a research product and as such changes nearly weekly. You can find new releases in the releases tab on GitHub (see installing).

We're in the data transformation business

The role of AP.exe is transform raw audio data into more useful information. AP.exe will however never attempt to make ecological or scientific inferences. The data produced will almost always need post-processing, whether that be by scripted analysis or manual review.

Caveats

Focused and narrow

AP.exe is designed to do automated, unassisted, analysis of audio at massive scales. It answers the questions we need answered.

It is not a product (like SongScope, Kaleidoscope, or SoundID) where you can build or customize recognisers as an end user.

Neither is it a library (like Seewave, warbleR, monitorR) because you can't pick and choose functions to stitch together to make something new.

Made for machines

AP.exe is made for machines to use. It is not user friendly, and has no graphical user interface. This limitation is an important and necessary constraint for AP.exe as it forces the tool to remain focused.

No support

We also officially provide no support, guarantee, or warranty for AP.exe. We have released AP.exe so that the community may benefit from our work but we do not have the resources to treat AP.exe as a fully fledged product.

Having said that, we're usually interested in fixing bugs, helping people, or adding features---so please contact us!

Old code, research code

Because of the age of the code, there are many bugs, a lot of old or unmaintained code, and a rich, complex, history of changes. There be dragons.