Area: Computing
FourierRocks. A WAV file comparison tool

ScreenshotFourierRocks is a graphical open source application that compares wav files. It deeply analyze files sound differences between files. It's particularly useful in many situations such as:

- Analyzing audio codec alterations
- Checking audio player response
- Analyzing CD-Ripping process
- Analyzing audio response (Loudspeaker comparison, Poweramp comparison, etc...)
- Many, many more

It not only compares bit information but performs an accurate and extended sound comparison (so you get an human readable and clear report)

Analysis consist in following steps:

  • Trim: silence is removed before and after the both file in order to compare only sound signal)
  • Normalization (optional). This is useful when comparing analogic recordings (e.g. testing dynamic response of a loudspeaker) in order to linearly normalize sound level. It should be avoided when analyzing digital signals (e.g recordings from S/PDIF, codec conversion analysis, etc...)
  • Best overlap delay: This step is fundamental in order to do an optimum comparison. Waveforms are shifted until they reach the best overlapping (this is done by finding the maximum value of the signals cross-correlation function... see wikipedia for more details)
  • Time domain analysis: this first step compare the two waveforms sample by sample and reports relative error in %.
  • Frequency domain analysis: this additional step compares waveforms spectrum (uses Fourier FFT) and report differences relative to frequency response (in dB)

Requirements

This application requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 2 (download here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856eacb-4362-4b0d-8edd-aab15c5e04f5&displaylang=en )

Limitations

  • Works only with 16bit PCM Wav files
  • Can compare only one channel (per file) at once
  • Spectrum analysis is a bit slow  (I suggest to analyze 15-30 sec. waveform at most for each session)

Download

License:

The application is released under the terms of the GNU GPL

Links: