Lindsey Eastham

October 13, 2013 Experiment No. 4 Spectrogram and Spectrogram Slice Introduction: This experiment explores 4 different methods of determining fundamental frequency. The data used comes from the Wave Form, Spectrograph, and Spectrograph Slice graphs that Raven produces. All graphs are a result of analysis under the Fourier Theorem. Materials: Raven Software Cello C2.aiff Sound file Human Voice and Square Wave sound files Procedure: I used Raven to examine all three sound files, to determine the fundamental frequency and component overtones. When a sound file is opened in Raven three graphs are displayed based on Fourier analysis of the sound. First is the Wave Form, which graphs amplitude vs. time (vertically in seconds). This chart may be used to calculate the fundamental frequency by using the formula F=1/T. Find T by selecting one cycle of the Wave Form, the Delta time is the period (T). The second graph is the Spectrograph, which shows overtones calculated by Fourier analysis. It is a three dimensional graph that shows Time (seconds on the horizontal axis), Frequency (kHz on the vertical axis), and loudness (measured by darkness of the line). It can be used to find fundamental frequency by identifying the lowest frequency in a sound. The lowest frequency is usually the fundamental, but not always. It is best to use another method to double check. The third graph is the Spectrogram slice. This graphs loudness (dB on the vertical axis), and Frequency (kHz on the horizontal axis) at one point in time on the Spectrogram. With this graph

you can find the fundamental frequency by finding the loudest frequency, or by measuring the spacing between harmonics. Results A. Cello C2

Looking at the wave form of the Cello sound, we can use the delta time to calculate frequency. F=1/T T (period) = 0.015284 s F=1/0.015284 s F= 65.427898 Hz The expected frequency for C2 in the frequency for pitch table is 65.41, so this observation is pretty accurate. It could be improved by measuring more cycles and finding an average period.

Looking at the Spectrograph, I would expect to see the 0.65 kHz line pretty dark. As you can see it is not the darkest line. This means that in this case, the the loudest and lowest frequencies do not indicate the fundamental pitch.

The spectrogram slice shows that there are many overtones louder and lower than 65.41 Hz.

The loudest overtone was 0.325 kHz, which is curiously half of the fundamental for C2, 65.41 Hz. This would be the fundamental for C1, which is an octave lower.

The lowest frequency found was 0.197 kHz. Clearly finding the loudest and lowest overtones in order to indicate fundamental frequency did not work with this example.

The last way to measure the fundamental frequency is measuring the distance between overtones. The Delta Frequency should be equal to the fundamental because each overtone is a multiple of the fundamental. Here you can see that in this selection the delta frequency was 65.726 Hz, this is very close to the expected result, 65.41 Hz. This margin of error can be accounted for by the fact that I only used one slice, the average distance between all the overtones would likely be closer to 65.41 Hz.

B. Square Wave In the Square Wave spectrograph I could see that the lowest and loudest frequency was 100Hz. The six frequencies used to make up a Square Wave are clearly shown as peaks on the graph at 100Hz, 300Hz, 500Hz, 700Hz, 900Hz, and 1100Hz.

C. Human Voice The lowest frequency on the spectrograph was 344 Hz. Although it was not the loudest frequency, it is close to the fundamental frequency calculated from the Wave Form in the last experiment. The lowest peak most likely represents the fundamental.

Conclusions The cello sound was a C2, which has a frequency of 65.41 Hz. I was able to confirm this by using F=1/T and the waveform, and by measuring the distance between overtones in the Spectrograph. My calculations using lowest and loudest frequency, on the other hand, were unsuccessful. I suspect this is either an error on my part, of a result of the complex overtone series that produces a cellos timbre. The square wave spectrograph was very clear. The loudest and lowest frequency was the fundamental (100Hz) and you could see six distinct peaks representing the component sine waves. It was not perfect though, the distance between each peak was 200Hz which is double what it should be. I suspect this happened because of the nature of the square wave form, the peaks are representing every other cycle. Both the wave form analysis, and the lowest frequency indicated the fundamental frequency of about 321 Hz for the Human voice, however it was not the loudest frequency. Additionally, the measurements between peaks did not represent this at all These results indicate to me that the square wave is fairly predictable, while the cello and voice sounds are much more complex and varying. This is evident looking at just the wave form of the sounds.

This experiment as a whole has lead me to a much broader understanding of the program Raven, and the components of sound and timbre.