I found a couple of good free VST plug-ins that function as FFT spectrum analyzers.
Freakoscope has a nice zoom in feature and multiple views, and takes up less CPU than VoxengoSPAN but SPAN has a nice averaging function so you can see the general profile of the music without it bouncing around a lot.
Freakoscope has very useful 1/3rd octave and semitone graphs.
Span has an adjustable gain setting.
* http://mdsp.smartelectronix.com/doc/ind ... reakoscope
* http://www.voxengo.com/product/SPAN/
A good free FFT spectrum analyzer VST plug-in
Spectrogram (formerly GRAM.EXE) is my favorite and has been for years.
If your analysis software, VST or otherwise, does not have facility to CALIBRATE it to the soundcard, you can use it, but know that it may not be doing things exactly as it should because of the soundcard's lack of flat response -- and just about all soundcards will exhibit this, some more than others, of course.
http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/gram.html
This one is a true scientific tool that can run standalone on yer puter.
I love the scroll view for analyzing mixes and especially for Mastering work. By viewing reference recordings, over time you will start to understand intuitively what the blue, green, yellow and red stuff in the scroll view mean when you see them. Grains of sand are noise, you can even spot the signs of a real speaker or speaker simulator at work in the guitar spectrum.
At one time, Gram was free.
Spectrogram is shareware type stuff, well worth it though for the serious audio engineer, Spectrogram is hard at work in all sorts of laboratories in all kinds of scientific endeavors, doing the job of softwares that cost ten times the price and doing it better.
We use Spectrogram exclusively in the world-wide SETI (Search for Extrarrestrial Intelligence) project, too:
http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/dsp50.html
The Birdwatchers and the Whale study people use Spectrogram to differentiate the calls.
NASA uses Spectrogram for analysis of all sorts of events audio.
To calibrate, you only need one of those NIST traceable audio test CDs that have sinewaves of various frequencies and amplitudes on them -- and a good CD player to hook to the soundcard if you want to include your soundcard's A-D and D-A in the calibration. (for use in mastering when it is all still in the digital domain, just use the puter's CD drive and make sure it is set for digital streaming)
Of course, this does not mean that you cannot use a good VST analyzer and get good results with your home recordings at all, just another pointer since we're on the subject.
I love Spectrogram.
Maybe I can dig up an old copy of the FREE gram.exe if anybody's interested and post a link to it. I have to see if it even runs on XP first (grin). It is the same internal engine.
--Mac
If your analysis software, VST or otherwise, does not have facility to CALIBRATE it to the soundcard, you can use it, but know that it may not be doing things exactly as it should because of the soundcard's lack of flat response -- and just about all soundcards will exhibit this, some more than others, of course.
http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/gram.html
This one is a true scientific tool that can run standalone on yer puter.
I love the scroll view for analyzing mixes and especially for Mastering work. By viewing reference recordings, over time you will start to understand intuitively what the blue, green, yellow and red stuff in the scroll view mean when you see them. Grains of sand are noise, you can even spot the signs of a real speaker or speaker simulator at work in the guitar spectrum.
At one time, Gram was free.
Spectrogram is shareware type stuff, well worth it though for the serious audio engineer, Spectrogram is hard at work in all sorts of laboratories in all kinds of scientific endeavors, doing the job of softwares that cost ten times the price and doing it better.
We use Spectrogram exclusively in the world-wide SETI (Search for Extrarrestrial Intelligence) project, too:
http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/dsp50.html
The Birdwatchers and the Whale study people use Spectrogram to differentiate the calls.
NASA uses Spectrogram for analysis of all sorts of events audio.
To calibrate, you only need one of those NIST traceable audio test CDs that have sinewaves of various frequencies and amplitudes on them -- and a good CD player to hook to the soundcard if you want to include your soundcard's A-D and D-A in the calibration. (for use in mastering when it is all still in the digital domain, just use the puter's CD drive and make sure it is set for digital streaming)
Of course, this does not mean that you cannot use a good VST analyzer and get good results with your home recordings at all, just another pointer since we're on the subject.
I love Spectrogram.
Maybe I can dig up an old copy of the FREE gram.exe if anybody's interested and post a link to it. I have to see if it even runs on XP first (grin). It is the same internal engine.
--Mac
That sounds interesting.Mac wrote: Maybe I can dig up an old copy of the FREE gram.exe if anybody's interested and post a link to it. I have to see if it even runs on XP first (grin). It is the same internal engine. --Mac
As an instrument engineer it always amazes me how much faith is put in non calibrated devices. They just give you numbers with no direct reference, some nearer the truth than others, but you never know which one.
I haven't done any analysing before but I guess it's time to get started. Any links on how to use it properly would be appreciated.
You and me both, brother -- and I might add that I always cringe when people, engineer and nonengineer alike, attempt to use the same device that they wish to measure as the device that does the measuring.sinbad wrote:
As an instrument engineer it always amazes me how much faith is put in non calibrated devices.
Things like using the PC itself to measure the amount of time the device uses, damn things like interrupts and lousy implementations of internal clocking.
Then complain about the figure obtained, of course, must be the fault of the manufacturer of some card dontcha know.
Too much faith in the digital software these days.
At least set up a separate puter to do the measuring -- and find a way to calibrate it, NIST traceable.
Ever hook up a dual trace storage scope to your soundcard and actually measure the REAL round trip ASIO time?
Heh.
--Mac