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Re: [Phys-l] software needed



I've gone looking for this software myself. Here's what
I've found. (By the way I do have Logger Pro, but some of
this software does stuff that Logger Pro doesn't.)

I agree with John Denker that you want to split the search
into two different pieces of software unless you really
want to pay serious money. There are many good free or
nearly free pieces of oscilloscope software. You have many
choices, and most are great. Some look just like a 'scope
and work like a 'scope, for good and ill. Others work
fairly different than 'scopes but have the same plotted
display. Both work great in audio frequencies and with
audio sized inputs. Some work pretty well even with
non-audio inputs, but you run risks of melting your sound
card.

Spectrum analysis software is more difficult to come by.
There used to be a fairly good set of free software back in
the Windows 95 days, but most of the software now costs
money. I am partial Spectrogram found at
<http://www.visualizationsoftware.com>. It can collect and
plot data in a variety of ways. It is easy to use and seems
to make pretty good graphs. I have used it with tuning
forks, musical instruments, and voice. It runs live and has
a pretty fast response time. I was able to use it find the
resonance in a wine glass so that I could break it with
sound. Old versions of the software were fully enabled but
would only work for 10 minutes without paying the shareware
fee. Current versions work for 10 days and then quit
without paying the fee.

You didn't mention this, but you might also want a tone
generating software. There are bunches, but my favorite is
Test Tone Generator. It is intuitive and will allow you to
create many different tones at the same time.

That reminds me of an interesting discovery I found one
day. I set up TTG to make play 150 Hz to the left side of a
stereo signal and 152 Hz to the right side of the stereo
signal. The beat frequency was very loud and easy to
discern. It was pretty cool to be able to turn the balance
on the amp left and right and hear the beats come and go.

I was annoying my colleagues though, so I put on
headphones. And I could still hear the beats!

I was amazed so I tried some experiments. I thought maybe
the left and right were bleeding across to the other side,
but each ear piece sounded uniform by itself. Then I
wondered if the sound went all the way through my head, so
I lowered the volume to the threshold of my hearing, I
could still hear the beats.

I think that this amazing.

Marc "Zeke" Kossover

As John Denker mentioned, there are many good

--- Josh Gates-fac <Josh_Gates-fac@nobles.edu> wrote:



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


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