Dive into Sound with SoundLab: A Free Tool for Acoustic Exploration
Seeing sounds! A gateway to creativity & curiosity. Here’s a visualization of a peacock call and my imitation of it 🦚😆
Tutorial showing you how to play with SoundLab as well as more advanced features.
Ever wondered what a bird song looks like, or how to visually understand the different frequencies in your favorite music? That's where SoundLab comes in! SoundLab is a free, web-based app designed to make sound visualization and analysis accessible to everyone.
What does SoundLab do?
SoundLab is an innovative tool that allows you to record, visualize, and analyze sounds right in your web browser. No downloads, no installations, just pure acoustic exploration.
Here's a quick rundown of what you can do with SoundLab:
Record and visualize your own voice or other sounds.
Specifically, sounds are visualized in a combined plot of a waveform and spectrogram:
waveform/oscillogram: showing changes to loudness over time
spectrogram: shows changes to loudness and frequency over time
Upload existing sound files.
Explore pre-loaded example sounds connected to the following educational STEM units we developed with researchers:
Balancing Act: Tradeoffs in frogs, humans, and other animals
Females singing to be heard: Challenging long-held assumptions about birdsong through data visualization (this one’s based on my PhD work)
Automatically detect sound “events” (like barks, chirps, or words) and extract data including frequencies, amplitudes, and durations.
Export data as tables, WAV files, and PNGs of sound visuals.
Create graphs to identify patterns in your sound data.
Middle School (Grades 6-8)
- MS-PS4-1: Use mathematical representations to describe a simple model for waves that includes how the amplitude of a wave is related to the energy in a wave.
- MS-PS4-2: Develop and use a model to describe that waves are reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through various materials.
- MS-LS1-8: Gather and synthesize information that sensory receptors respond to stimuli by sending messages to the brain for immediate behavior or storage as memories.
High School (Grades 9–12)
- HS-PS4-1: Use mathematical representations to support a claim regarding relationships among the frequency, wavelength, and speed of waves traveling in various media.
- HS-PS4-3: Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning behind the idea that electromagnetic radiation can be described either by a wave model or a particle model.
- HS-LS1-5: Use a model to illustrate how photosynthesis transforms light energy into stored chemical energy. (This is tangential, but may apply if exploring sensory systems or energy transformations in organisms.)
Why is SoundLab exciting and powerful?
Dr. Liz Scordato and I stand with microphones, binoculars, and Marantz recording devices at the ready to record barn swallow songs during our trek across Russia in 2013.
SoundLab makes the complex world of sound analysis—previously only explored by scientists like myself—simple and approachable. It combines functions of products like Adobe Audition, Raven, or custom code in python that require lots of money or expertise to use. It transforms abstract audio into visual representations, revealing hidden details and patterns. Imagine being able to see the individual notes in a melody, or comparing the vocalizations of different bird species. With SoundLab, this is not only possible, but also easy to do!
The power of SoundLab lies in its ability to turn sound into data. By analyzing and visualizing sound, we can gain a deeper understanding of the world around us. For students, teachers, and researchers, SoundLab opens up new avenues for exploration and discovery. For everyday curious folks, it simply makes sound fun and engaging.
How is SoundLab free?
SoundLab has been a passion project of mine. It’s brought to you by Galactic Polymath Education Studio in partnership with listeningtowaves.org and is funded by the National Science Foundation (through a grant to Dr. Michael Reichert at Oklahoma State) and a few generous Indiegogo supporters.
Whether you're a student, a teacher, a researcher, or just someone curious about sound, SoundLab offers a unique and exciting way to explore the acoustic world. Check out SoundLab today and start your own journey into the fascinating science of sound!
Have fun and share your audio visualizations with the hashtag #soundlab & tag @galacticpolymath if you’re on Bluesky! Let us know how you’re using this tool in your classroom or ask questions in the comments.
