Nerd Up

Woo-Hoo!

[Yeah, I know I said Noise.io but I'm not ready yet.]

Here’s a handy tool for ya’ll who are into sound… Oscillator by Masayuki Akamatsu is a digital audio frequency generator application for the iPhone and iPod touch.

I thought it was strange that the oscillator’s parameters had a relatively limited bandwidth by default, but one can adjust this by hitting “Edit”. From there, this App can be used to test your system by employing a sinewave to sweep the frequency from the lowest audible signal to the highest in the hearing spectrum – that’s provided your speakers can reproduce it (and you can hear all that)! This can be handy for finding bumps in the frequency response of your system, which can have issues because of speaker placement/damage and crossover settings. Over the entirety of the sweep across the spectrum I’ve found the sound to be a smooth transition, which is unlike some digital oscillator plugins I’ve heard.

Oscillator can also send out “white” noise (and it is ONLY white, no pink or brown for some unknown reason)  for a general signal for setting your levels. Other waveforms one can select include Sawtooth and Squarewave, which I haven’t found a use for yet (please add any suggestions in the comments) but they might be part of Oscillator’s pretense that it can also be a “strange instrument”.

This is a cool App, especially for .99 cents. I’ve impressed other sound guys with this application. It actaully made one guy want to turn in his Blackberry! I’ve already used it in a few venues to check out the setup, in my home and on my various pairs of headphones. Very revealing. One thing it’s definitely missing is Pink noise, which still baffles me. It baffles me infinitely (audio joke ripped off from max cooper on gearslutz.com).

The one thing I haven’t done is check it with a frequency analyzer for accuracy, which the author admits isn’t perfect. Whatever. This is still handy to have.

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Oscillator by Masayuki Akamatsu

Available in iPhone app store.

Find out (little) more on iTunes.