Faunal Aural Codex emblem with a variety of minimalistic animal shapes in green and blue blended into a sound wave on a white background

The Faunal Aural Codex

Welcome to the FACx (the animal sounds database)! We are a volunteer-driven initiative, dedicated to the goal (and the journey) of building THE complete compendium of accurate, comprehensive, and professional quality animal sound recordings. Woven together through the disciplines of field recording and location sound, acoustic ecology, and conservation, 'The Codex' is continually expanding through the incredible field recording submissions made by recordists from all across the planet. With each new addition, the sonic picture of our natural world becomes more robust, enlivened, and resolved, providing the global community with an archive of immeasurable value and wonder.

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Pause for a moment. Take a step outside. Listen.

Depending on where on the planet you are in this moment, the possibilities of animals around you are staggering. Now, can you name what you've just heard?

Your ears are always on. Even before we are born, we are listening. And of the great many things we can listen to, some of the oldest and we'll known sounds to human beings are those created by the kaleidoscope of creatures with which we share the planet. Often, even when you can't put eyes on them, you can detect animals through sound. Whether you are venturing through the forest, camping on a mountainside, traversing the coast, or sitting on your back porch, knowing the owners of those calls, chirps, squeaks, warbles, howls, hoots, hisses, barks, cries, growls, roars, grunts, and so much more, deepens your understanding of the living world you inhabit.

Inspired by his experiences working on the 100 Soundscapes of North Carolina project, recordist and sound designer Kyle Raub conceived the Faunal (animal) Aural (sound) Codex (album) after noticing diminished natural soundscapes during his statewide field recording journeys. Having the opportunity to venture to and be still in wonderfully 'quiet' places, it became unavoidably apparent that the sounds of the fauna in these locations were not only captivating and intriguing, but also in many ways delicate and capricious. Often, it doesn't take much to disrupt an otherwise balanced soundscape. To carefully observe and preserve them can be a laborious task, but it is also enriching, joyful, and rewarding).

Estimates range a bit in accuracy and account, but the Animal Kingdom ('Animalia') is comprised of around 1.5 million observed and identified species with possibly 6-6.5 million more roaming the planet. They are take on every foam, and travel by every means and manner. Flying, crawling, swimming, running, jumping, rolling, digging, dancing, slithering, transforming, learning, and doing it all over again. In truth, we owe a good bit our achievement and understanding of the world on our knowledge of they in theirs. Hence, the Faunal Aural Codex and a mission to record the many actions and vocalizations of each identified species, wherever sonically possible.

At some of the most significant moments in our lives, we are given reason for great pause. They can be opportunities, welcomed or otherwise, to confront something that is immense and gravitational by some measure or variable, and yet shrouded, in need of discovery. The effort required for this work is equally as great, but we are set on the endeavor to see it done. Though hopefully, not alone. With the help of many hands (and ears, brains, mics, recorders, headphones, cables, ... ) that work will surely be made light.

If you are ready to learn how you can help and join in on this monumental effort, follow along below!

The FACx Submission Process

Becoming a Contributor

Avid field recordists, adventuring sound designers, location audio wanted! If you have a passion for the natural world and skillset that revolves around all-things audio, we'd love to work together. As a Contributor to The Codex, you will become part of a global team who is working together to build the most detailed and complete animal sound library ... ever. With even a single submission, you'll take on the title of 'Auditory Conservationist', over time working your way up to 'Hero of the Animal Realm'.

To get started, you'll need to create a user profile. This will allow you to keep tabs on your submissions as you participate, stay up-to-date and informed about the development of The Codex, and help us easily scale up the database as it will inevitably need to do so over time.

Submission Standards & Guidelines

The aim of FACx is to build a collection of the highest possible quality animal audio recordings, each of which represents some aspect of the subject animal's behavior, vocalizations, habitat, or physicality. If pressed to describe what a perfect contribution to The Codex would look like, we would simply say 'good, clean, focused audio of an animal being their animal selves'. Though, it might be best to outline in further detail what those terms could mean and to provide a few examples as references. So, we've established a set of technical and contextual standards to better assist you as a contributor and to build consistency across the Codex. Please review both standard sets before submitting any audio via the Recording Submission Form.

Technical

The following standards pertain to the audio content which will be submitted, and include the complete range of all acceptable audio:

Format: .WAV or .FLAC
Channels: Mono, Stereo, 3 Ch (e.g., Double Mid-Side), 4 Ch (e.g., BAmbiX), 5 Ch (e.g., 5.1 Surround), 8 Ch (e.g., ORTF 3D)
Sample Rate: 48 (minimum), 96 (ideal), or 192 kHz (if required, e.g., whales, dolphins, some small mammals, some insects, etc.)
Bit Rate: 24-bit
Metadata: UCS 8.2 or more recent (all embedded styles are permitted)
Loudness: Integrated Range (between -50 dBFS and -6 dBFS), True Peak Max (-1.5 dBFS)
Length: 00:01.00 - 01:00.00. Recordings longer than 1 minute may be approved depending on specific case-by-case content.

Contextual

The following standards pertain to the recorded content of the audio files being submitted:

Field Recording:

Only real-world acoustic field recordings are accepted. Please do not submit any generated, Foley, synthetic, or otherwise designed audio.

Subject (species): Any member species or sub-species of the animal Kingdom.
Focus (event): Any sounds naturally created by the Subject. This can include vocalizations, physical characteristics, unique movement, mannerisms, demonstrated behavioral traits, etc. So long as the recording is sonically unique in some aspect to the Subject, it is applicable as an independent file in the Codex.
Soundscape: The most pronounced and punctuated content in the soundscape should be the Focus of the Subject. Mic'ing specifically with an appropriate array or technique should be considered when capturing the recording.
Whenever possible, each submitted file should have a single Subject and Focus. It can contain many events of the same focus (e.g., a Red Fox call, multiple times), but should not contain multiple Foci if avoidable (e.g., Red Fox calls and burrowing for prey). Those should be submitted separately.
If multiple Subjects are captured in the same recording/file (e.g., a Blue Jay is singing in the forest during the Red Fox calls), that is allowed as long as the Subject which the audio is being submitted for is clearly heard and articulated above all other species in the recording.
Noise: All submitted recordings should be free from any distracting or significant noise that either detracts from or modulates the subject audio in an undesirable way.

Editing:

With a primary goal of authenticity and accuracy, please keep any and all edits to a bare minimum while preserving any and all content related to the Subject and Focus. Ideally, no cuts, splits, or crossfades are used.

Trimming: Removing any unnecessary content form the beginning and end of the recording is encouraged.
Fading: Do not apply gain fades at the beginning and end of each file. Simply start and end the file at zero crossings.
EQ: Only what is minimally required to best represent the Focus AND does not alter frequencies in the Focus' range.
Effects: Please do not apply modulation effects or automations.
Noise Reduction: Minimal to None. Preference is given to slight background noise over noise-scrubbed audio where the subject audio is affected in an undesirable way.

If your submission meets the standards above, it will likely be accepted. Ideally, submissions should attempt to be as natural, focused, and efficient possible with regard to the Subject.

Examples:

Gathering flock of flamingos (many birds) in a marshy delta - 96kHz/24-bit, wide stereo or multichannel array, up to 1 minute of continuous movement and vocalizations.
Single mouse in a quiet room - 192kHz/24-bit, mono, several seconds of squeaks and chirps.
A pair of frogs in a stream pool: - 96kHz/24-bit, mono or stereo, 1 file for duration of a few croaking vocalizations, another file for hops and plops into/out of the water.

Content Limits

In order to maintain equilibrium within The Codex, a limit is applied on the quantity of stored recordings per Subject and Focus.

Subject (species) max: 30 recordings
Focus max: 5 recordings

This means that we will store at max 30 recordings of any given animal, with no more than 5 recordings of any particular action or event (a type of vocalization, physical habit, etc.) Once enough submissions for a species or focus have been accepted, that species entry will be tagged as Complete and any additional submissions for that species will be declined.

Be sure to lookup your species in The Codex first to check its status before completing a submission.

Review

All submission to FACx will be reviewed by a member of the Audio Team. We use both manual and automatic processes for checking any files that are submitted, using a technical procedure built from the standards and guidelines detailed above. This process may take up to a month to complete. You will receive an email confirming your submission was successfully received as well as an email informing you of your submission's determination, sent to the email address in your user profile. If a submission is accepted, its audio, data, and metadata (including your credit and attribution to it) will be permanently stored in The Codex.

In the File Upload section of the Recording Submission Form, you will notice that there are only 2 file upload fields available per submission. This is done for two key reasons:

To better facilitate how we are collecting and categorizing content per species, at intake
To reduce large uploads of the same focus

Each submission should be a pairing of Subject (the animal species) and Focus (the event, action, vocalization, etc. that the species is doing). If you have several Foci from the same species, these should be submitted separately. If you have a large collection of well-organized audio assets that you would like to submit to The Codex (libraries, entire dataases, content that exceeds more than 10 individual submissions) then please contact us at info@eiravaein.com with a subject line of "Faunal Aural Codex" and describe your collection which you would like to contribute. We will be more than happy to work with you in batch processing your content to help streamline the review and addition of large data sets.

In whatever way you are able to contribute, we welcome all recordists, teams, collectives, organizations, and institutions to participate in this full-scale endeavor to honor, catalogue, and venerate our animal friends through sound.

Licensure Information

All audio and relative data/metadata that is submitted and accepted to The Codex is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. You can find comprehensive information about the license here.

Contributions to The Codex are NOT required to be exclusive. You can retain ownership of your audio and use it for whatever personal or commercial purposes you wish. However, once accepted into The Codex the audio files will be licensed under the CC license as stated above. Please consider this in preparing your submissions. It may be beneficial to slightly alter and tag your contributed audio in the filename or relevant metadata field (e.g., description) with context identifying it as a 'contribution to the Faunal Aural Codex', or something similar.

Accessing the FACx

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Go to Submission Form

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