I am illustrating a book on musical cognition and would like to find some software to generate simple two-dimentional graphs showing fourier analysis of sounds over time. Any suggestions?

Man, if I had a million dollars for every time someone asked that one...

Sorry, but I haven't even THOUGHT about Fourier Analysis since 1980. Weirdest math course I ever took.

What sort of sounds are you graphing?

I think I detect some irony here. General musical sounds: a piano tone, a chord, someone coughing. Very short samples to help illustrat hou sounds are built. I can draw (fake) them myself, but the real thing would be better.

I can refine this request at this point. I know that SoundEdit will generate rather fuzzy, unprintable things; SoundHack will sort of do it, but it generates movies, which don't show well on the printed page; MacBuzz doesn't work on my machine. PlayerPro will show frequency but it is in real time.

Still looking.

Doug

try amadeus II. its cheap ($30) and does oodles of diffterent audio analysies (all very configurable), some even in real time.

you can find it at harmony-central or hitsquad (shareware music machine).

good for some other stuffs too. the documentation is very sparse which is my only complaint.

soundhack is kinda cool in that it can make a quicktime movie of a spectral analysis (qtcoder), needs LOTS of memory though. the result of a norml spectral analysis i guess can be accessed (viewed) by tom's free program, ohhh...spectral something or another, also in csound...this is stretching into unfamilar territory though.

best.

//c

I`ve done that with director MX and a Xtra called asFFT, from as-ci.net!!!
I´ve are a tiny little bit into programming, its sooo much fun. if not, drop me a line and i´´ll send you some files I made. on the as-ci page you find lots of help too!

cheers, ali

Hi, I'm pretty awful where any maths rears its ugly head I'm afraid;-( I thought fourier transforms were something to do with mink coats;-)
However, I'm sure I heard somewhere a few years ago that a bloke had built such a device in his shed, out of.......meccano would ya believe! 'Cant remember why. I seem to remember a purely mechanical antique thing in Londons science museum which did Fourier graphs, Lorenz equations and other impressive hard math stuff!
Sorry for my fairly useless answer to your post, I'm sure some more mathematically able forum member will give you a proper answer, regards John.

That's true about the guy in his shed I swear!

in 1980 fft for audio was only theory, today we can do this in realtime and 24/96.


spectrafoo (very expensive) and soundhack (free) can do this on OS 9.
soundhack maybe is better for making pictures, you can put it fullscreen.