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Re: [Phys-l] software needed




It may be helpful to split the question into two parts.

As for plain old oscilloscope functions, it is fairly easy to get
something that is
a) easy to use, and
b) powerful enough to do what you want.


As for spectrum analyzers, I have never found one that was
a) easy to use, and
b) powerful enough to do what I wanted.

More commonly I've encountered ones that were *neither* easy to
use nor powerful enough. More than once I've had to build custom
analysis systems.

Maybe if you had a very specific application in mind, you could rig up
an analyzer optimized for that application. Perhaps if we heard more
about the intended application(s) better suggestions would be forthcoming.

The application SoundCheck is fairly good for most of the applications
that I have in mind, but not all. The oscilloscope nature doesn't fulfill
all of my needs. Sig View is expensive and does not Perhaps it would be
easier if I listed some of the specific tasks that I want the students to
be able to do.
- Calculate freq. and period from waveform
- Pick out fundamental, overtones from freq. spectrum (A vs. f)
- Discern multiple fundamentals in DTMF tones using freq. spectrum
- Record many seconds of sound with visible time scale,
click-and-zoomable freq. spectrum analysis of only a portion of the signal
- Use the timescale to get delta t between events (equal-time nut drop
expt.)

Does this it narrow it down? If anyone's familiar with LoggerPro, those
are exactly the capabilities that I'm looking for!
Thanks,
Josh