I've been reading lately, here and on other music related forums, about people starting having problems with their hearing.
How can you deal with that when your biggest passion s music, mixing and producing ?
Well, as an imperfect solution come analyzers.
This is, of course, an imperfect solution but came in handy also for people without disabilities but just with a fatigued hearing (after hours of mixing) or just a double check.
Some sound editors have that useful tool but most of sequencers/ multitrackers need a third party plugin.
Here’s a list of some good free analyzers:
Sonogram sg-1
SG-1 gathers some features which are usually isolated in other sonogram tools.
It works in real-time. It continues analyzing in the background, and only stops when you freeze it. Both in frozen or running mode, every time you click or drag within the sonogram area, frequency and amplitude rulers highlight the values corresponding to that point.
A little LED-like screen shows you in detail analysis information and parameter modifications, or the transport position when idle.
Available as Win VST.
Voxengo Span
SPAN is a real-time “fast Fourier transform” audio spectrum analyzer plug-in for professional music and audio production applications.
Available as Mac AU, Mac VST, Win VST, WIN64 VST.
Seven Phases Spectrum Analyzer
Spectrum Analyzer is a real-time spectrum analysis VST plugin. An unique (and quite experimental) feature of the plugin is its detached spectrum display window, freely resizable independently of host application capabilities.
Available as Win VST.
Bs-Spectrum
Bs-Spectrum is a FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) spectrum analyzer which can show linear or logarithmic frequency visualization.
Available as Win VST and Mac AU.
DetectComp
DetectComp is a more complex analyzer, which offer "real-time multi-criterion numerical analysis" :
- High and low velocity
- Stereo deviation
- High and low frequency mean
- Compression statistical indicator
- Peak and RMS progressive values
- Velocity Distribution computation
- Frequency Distribution computation
- Velocity and frequency evolution (20'' / 8' periods)
(say what ? many of those terms are too much for me... still, looks impressive.)
Available as Win VST.
Oszillos Mega Scope
Oszillos-Mega-Scope is a BPM-synced oscilloscope with support for multiple inputs. It gives you a visualization of the waveforms you feed it. This can be handy in different situations like compressor-fine-tuning, sound design, drum programming, etc.
Features:
- Supports multiple Channels.
- Supports different zoom-levels (1/32th note to 16 bars).
- Two different visualisation modes (separate waves, combined waves).
The interesting thing that caught my eye is the support for multiple inputs, so you can monitor more elements of your mix and how they "sit in the mix" together.
Blue Cat's FreqAnalyst
Blue Cat's FreqAnalyst is a free spectrum analyzer plug-in that lets you monitor the spectral content of your audio signal in real time.
It is a bit slow to my taste but not bad.
This plug-in supports Blue Cat's skinning language, so that you can customize the user interface to your personal needs.
Last on this list I left my favorite one.
MultiInspectorFree
MultiInspectorFree is a 31 band spectral analyzer with multitrack functionality. It incorporates a standard third octave frequency analyzer. Center frequencies of the bands are based on the ISO 266:1997 standard (20 Hz to 20 kHz). Pink noise will appear flat in the frequency spectrum. MultiInspectorFree supports up to 4 instances at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz.
MultiInspectorFree visualizes up to 4 different audio signals in real time in one window .
Available as Win VST, Mac VST and Mac AU.
