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Help with recording and replaying bell that is interfering with sleep and daily activities

Posted by mr_ron_13 (A) on October 1, 2017 at 05:30:33

I am trying to track down the sound of a faint, but startling, ringing bell that I am hearing in my suburban house. It is waking me up at odd hours of the night and sometimes when I try to rest during the day. It has been interfering with my sleep for several days now giving me incentive to try to track it down soon if possible. It sounds a little bit similar to my own doorbell for which a link to an mp3 recording is provided. I have lived in the house for decades and normally don't hear doorbells, ringing telephones or normal conversations from inside neighboring houses. I may hear slamming car doors from the street at my front door as well as loud conversations from people on the street or sidewalk.

I have tried to record the sound with a TASCAM DR-05 digital recorder and I am fairly certain, but not 100% sure, I can faintly hear the sound of the bell in the recordings, sometimes with the help of "Smart MP3 Cutter" and its volume adjustment. I would like to able to record the sound and play it back so other people can clearly hear and understand the problem and I can ask for help resolving it. Besides the recorder, my current hardware is a Dell Optiplex 9020 with Realtek HD audio and Creative Labs GigaWorks T20 speakers (slightly damaged?). The computer has an AMD Radeon R7 250 card but I have never looked into using it for audio.

The sound of the bell in the recording is faint but if I set up my equipment and software just right I am fairly certain I am able to hear it between 11.6 and 12.345 seconds into the 13 second recording. To hear the bell clearly enough for certainty I have to open faint-doorbell-from-11.6secs-to-12.345secs.mp3 in "Smart MP3 Cutter", set 11.6 and 12.345 as the start and end times, and raise the volume to somewhere in the range of 110% to 120%. I then set the Windows (10) volume to 100% and on the GigaWorks T20 speakers set the base down about 10% below middle, treble up about 15%-20% and volume about 60% above minimum. I have to listen pretty carefully and watch for the replay entering the selected time range to identify the sound of the ring. Unfortunately in the process of hunting for the sound I may have damaged my speakers by playing some loud sounds at a too high volume setting. After the accident the bell seems harder to pick out from the recording. The TASKAM DR-05 is configured to record with 256K MP3 format and a sampling rate of 48K.

I am pretty desperate to demonstrate definitively and with certainty that I have recorded the sound of the bell that I believe I am hearing. My first question is - can someone out there with good ears and equipment verify with certainty that I am correctly hearing the sound of a bell at the specified time range on the recording? If so can someone suggest a way to enhance the sound clip or provide me with an enhanced sound clip so I can demonstrate the sound of a bell with portable equipment like a normal laptop or cell phone? Can someone suggest better equipment so that I can record and replay the bell including possibly a better recording device or an appropriate microphone I can attach to it, good enhancement software or replacements for the (possibly damaged) speakers? The problem is easily serious enough for me that I am willing to pay consulting fees so to ahead and send a private message or email if you feel that you can help as a consultant. I like music but am not an audiophile and, while I feel I have strong incentive to resolve this, will take of cost of solving the problem into consideration if the cost seems unduly wasteful.

Thank you so very much to anyone who took time to look at this and has a suggestion,
Ronald Schmidt

• Web page with relevant sound clips   (Open in New Window)

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