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Question: What would be your recommended Microphone / Interface Setup ?

Task: Hello everyone, i am curious about a technical setup to record Xylem tubes and water cavitating inside trees. the idea was to record it in a longer period and to sort out if trees produce different sounds in stressful situations, inside cities, or outside. I want to record different trees simultaneously on various locations, with small microcomputer devices / or cellphones which will send the data later to a server. There will be also a graphical interface / network type to combine sounds and data from audioanalysis. The result of all this would be an artistic setting / research, not a scientific one.

I can think of various problems with this:

  • which sort of inner city trees to choose (birch, maple, poplar, ...)
  • the season
  • the thickness of the bark (obviously)
  • further also regarding live transfer of the audio signal to the server (i had good results with setting up internet radio stations as live streams for another occasion)

Internet Sources concerning this:

Article about tree sounds under distress

Article about Tree Listening

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2 Answers 2

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I have had good results using hydrophones (aquarian audio) as pickups with trees. I made a kind of belt to strap them onto the tree as the pickup surface of those hydrophones is curved. As WMXZ suggests, the ambient sound could be very problematic. Because of the root structure the trees conduct vibrations from the ground. I had to seriously high-pass filter the sound to hear any flow within the trees. You might want to check out the work of David Dunn whose website seems to be unfortunately offline at the moment. This is a link to work listening to beetle infestation of trees: https://www.aeinews.org/aeiarchive/dunn/solitsounds.html

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  • $\begingroup$ Have you tried different setups with Piezos too? I think that would be a choice too as it gets rid of all suroundings $\endgroup$
    – jindo
    Commented Jul 15, 2023 at 10:27
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    $\begingroup$ Piezos were more difficult to attach to the tree. I remember (i think) that Dunn used piezos soldered to sterilised needles. Piezos are usually more skewed towards high frequencies, but always have a resonant frequency which can confuse things. I don't know what Alex Metcalf used - maybe worth trying to get in touch with him. $\endgroup$
    – Justin Bennett
    Commented Jul 16, 2023 at 11:29
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The recording/data relay side should be not an issue. most microcontoller ecosystem feature also wifi options. What, however IMO could be challanging is the pickup of the water sound in the xylum tubes. You wanted to hear the tree and not the car traffic, or the birds in the park. You may need to build something that allows sound from the tree to arrive at the microphone/pickup and be insenitive to surrounding sound.

Even if not intended for scientific research, suggest to team-up with some close-by researcher to understand better what you hear and backing your experience with science.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for your suggestion. I am in contact with people from my old University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences for that project now. The microphones should be contactmicrophones, like you said, to avoid outside interferences. $\endgroup$
    – jindo
    Commented Aug 9, 2023 at 8:51

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