Exploring sounds at the Wild Center's Raven exhibit. Photo by Tim Krein

When lions roar and catbirds meow—people listen. Nature centers, zoos, aquariums, museums, and schools often use sound to help people connect with nature and to make learning fun. A suite of software tools called Raven is tailor-made for this purpose. Created in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Bioacoustics Research Program (BRP), Raven turns sound into colorful spectrograms and wave forms. It allows users to play sounds, compare sounds, record and play their own voices, play sounds backwards, speed them up or slow them down.

“People really focus in on sound—and as soon as they listen to a few recordings and see the wave forms and spectrograms, they start to understand a little bit more about the science of sound,” says BRP software engineer Tim Krein.

The Wild Center opened in July 2006 and has welcomed more than 100,000 visitors already. Photo by Tim Krein

The most recent use of Raven is in the spectacular new Wild Center/Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks in Tupper Lake, New York. The Raven sound exhibit is set up in an area called the “Naturalist’s Cabinet,” filled with hands-on, interactive activities.

“When children compare two sounds, record themselves mimicking sounds, or even just record their own laughter, the space becomes filled with those sorts of experimental sounds,” says Wild Center exhibit manager Eric Filo. “The sound studio is constantly in use.” The Wild Center sound exhibit is one part of the year-long “Wings over the Adirondacks” theme with talks and other exhibits focused on birds.

Having fun with sounds at the Wild Center. Photo by Eric Filo

“What’s nice about Raven Exhibit,” says Krein, “Is that it provides the framework for an exhibit and allows users to plug in their own sounds and images if they choose, or we can supply a set of sounds.” More than 100 recordings of birds and mammals will be programmed into the Wild Center exhibit. The recordings come from the Lab’s Macaulay Library archive, the largest collection of bird and animal sounds in the world.

Raven is also being used in “Wild Music,” a seven-year traveling science show created by the Science Museum of Minnesota. Some schools and colleges are using the free Raven Lite version of the software to teach about sound and music. Aquariums and zoos have also expressed an interest.

Tim Krein (right) and Eric Filo during installation of the Raven sound exhibit at the Wild Center. Photo by Diane Krein

In the museum world, an exhibit is considered a success if a visitor stays with it for two minutes. The average time spent in the Raven Sound Studio at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is 12 minutes, with some folks riveted for an hour or more. After surveying visitors, museum exhibit consultant Beverly Serrell summed up the experience: “The exhibit is fun—pleasurable, challenging, amusing, intriguing, and intellectually stimulating.”

“When you add that visual component to what you’re hearing, a lot of people are able to tie the two elements together much more easily,” says Krein. “You’re not just remembering the sound—you have a visual image in your brain.”

Raven Products:

Raven Pro: the scientific version of the software

Raven Lite: user-friendly version for the public—FREE

Raven Exhibit: tailored for exhibits

Raven Viewer: online tool for viewing video and sounds from the Macaulay Library archive

Learn more about Raven software products.


--Pat Leonard