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Re: [Phys-l] software needed



There is a commercial program that has a lot of what you want, but has many
other features which you probably don't want. It is Audio Cleaning Lab 10.
It is designed to be used to record sound and then clean it or enhance it so
you can make homemade CDs. It has an autoscaling feature, but more
importantly the spectral cleaner gives you a display of the frequency
response as a function of time. The frequency is on the vertical scale and
the sound level is shown as a color. You can cut out sections of the sound
and play it back with parts missing. You have virtually unlimited zoom so
you can zoom until the actual digital bins are clearly visible. Zooming is
very simple.

It also has a real time spectral display with adjustable bin width. While
it is not free, you can get the previous year's version for around $10 or
free with a rebate. Version 10 is last year's version and the new 2007
version is already in the stores.

Since it is a consumer product it is relatively friendly and not as geeky as
a lot of scientific software. Unfortunately the displays including Fourier
analysis are not done in realtime and must be displayed after you have
recorded a clip. It also has the usual sorts of things which are on
consumer recording products including an equalizer. One can generate sounds
on the computer, and then using the master volume control on a PC it is
possible to simultaneously record the sounds you are generating. And yes,
it runs only on a PC, and not on a Mac. It is actually one of the fastest,
feature laden, and easiest programs to use for enhancing audio, but that is
a different story. It also has very poor support, so what else is new, but
at $10 or free that should not be a problem.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


At 07:22 PM 8/19/2006, Josh Gates, you wrote:

I'm looking for some free/cheap sound analysis software for class this
year. The only necessary requirements are:
- record variable length samples from sound card
- show waveform with time scale, pref. with autoscaling capability
- FFT frequency spectrum generation

That's it! I find lots of stuff that's too expensive or has too many
features and too complicated an interface to unleash on 9th graders - I'm
really looking for a display something along the lines of LoggerPro from
Vernier.
thanks!
jg