For each Microphone Setting Profile, you can set whether to save processed audio as full-spectrum recordings, zero-crossing recordings, both, or neither.
If neither output format is enabled, the SMART System will still analyze incoming audio to perform the following functions if they are enabled:
- Automatic bat species classification, producing a results.csv file containing records of detected bat species by date and time
- Bat activity alarm logic
In most cases, it is strongly recommended to save audio in at least one format. This allows you to manually verify the automatic bat classification results and troubleshoot the behavior of your alarms.
Recommended Output Settings for Bat Monitoring
The SMART can save your recordings as full-spectrum WAV files, zero-crossing ZC files, or both. WAV files provide a much fuller image of the captured audio than ZC files when analyzed in a spectrogram viewer, but they are also much larger files.
If you are recording sample data to design bat activity alarms for wind turbine deployment, we strongly recommend you save both WAV and ZC files. WAV files are much easier to examine for bat call and noise characteristics, but running your test alarms on ZC files direct from the SMART system provides the most accurate simulations.
In recording environments with low levels of ambient noise, you can record only ZC files to dramatically reduce your file storage requirements. We recommend this only if you are familiar with analyzing ZC files and understand their limitations.
| Setting | Recommended Value |
|---|---|
| Output WAV | Enabled, except when storage space is extremely limited |
| Output ZC | Situational Enabled when recording test data for bat activity alarms |