Official Luthiers Forum!

I have been building guitars as a hobby for the last 17 years. A few years back, I started to use Audacity and later Visual Analyser (VA) to find resonnant frequencies of plates and instruments.
The many steps one have to go through to get a usable spectrum lead me to make my own software.
Over the last 2 years, I have developped a spectrum analysis software for luthiers, which I call Luthiers's Spectrum Analyser (LSA).
It has all what we get from VA plus a few goodies specific to the luthier world, but to my view, much easier to use and more adapted to our needs.
I have been using it for a while now and I am quite satisfied with the result. My plan is to distribute it as a shareware for a minimal fee.
Since the software is at its early stage, I am now looking for a few people to act as Beta testers.

Those interested to be Beta testers, need to download the program, try it and if still interested in becomming a Beta tester send me an email at the address shown in LSA.
Beta Testers will receive a free registration, which is not much, but will have a chance to participate in the fine tuning and improvement of LSA.

You can get a copy of the fully functionnal demo software here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1X4FSJ ... uAeHgzvdnP
This is for Windows users.

Thank you for your interest.

Pretty nice. Easy to use and did a good job at picking out the resonances.




It would be nice to include the detected resonances in the save jpg.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

I’ve been wanting to experiment with this, but as a new builder only 14 guitars in I’m not sure how valuable my input will be ha


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

John, the curves are saved as data as well as Jpeg, you can recall them and label the peaks.
but yes the resonnances could possibly be saved as well in a future version.

Alain,
I just downloaded and tried out the program. Looks very good so far. I'm on a trip to visit my kids in Oregon just now, but I'll try it in more detail next week when I'm home- I only have one guitar with me on the trip... I have other guitars at home that I have a lot of Audacity data on to compare. I really like the simplicity of getting the data, and the features meet my needs.

Please enroll me as a Beta tester...Thanks

Gene Zierdt

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Gene

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason- Mark Twain

Thank you Gene for the good comments.
PM sent.

I will try it out this weekend, Alain. I'm looking forward to it.

Any chance you'll port it to MacOS?

Ditto on a Mac version. I don't allow PCs in my house. Besides, Macs do a better job on audio recording.

I have a polite push-back on this statement of fact. The quality of the audio recording is really determined by everything that happens before the A/D converted signal hits the computer, making the type of computer (and the DAW software) a matter of user preference. Moreover, while some folks find Macs easier to use for audio recording, there are plenty of folks who feel the opposite. I, for instance, prefer Reaper on a PC to anything along the ProTools line. To each her/his own.

But, the larger point is that there are plenty of Mac users out there, and it would be great if this software could accommodate their preferences.

Don, I don't usually act as troll but I realized that statement of mine would stir the pot. Thanks for your polite push-back.

I've never smelled troll when you are participating, Barry. It's all good.

I am fortunate to be able to dual-purpose some of my decent audio recording gear for this task. That's definitely overkill. A lot of folks here use onboard soundcards and USB condenser mics for finding resonant frequencies. So, the audio quality bar is set low enough for any OK audio gear to measure up just fine.

That is not impossible. I would have to get familiar with MacOS and get a Mac!
This is not for a near future.

For you MAc owners:
I am totally ignorant to the Mac world. What hardware / software version should be targetted?
MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Air, etc. This is confusing to me.
Do they all share the same OS?

Yes, they all use the same OS. So no need for different versions of programs.

My son built a really powerful gaming PC and he now runs Mac OS on it most of the time, even for high quality audio recording.

For spectrum analysis, I use a freeware program called Room EQ Wizard (REW) which is cross platform capable. It was designed for people analyzing and building audio speakers. But it works fine for testing guitar resonances. The thing I really like about it is it works in real time so you can see how the peaks move around when you are tapping. Then you can freeze it to read the peaks. I've mentioned this program several times but I don't think I have ever had any bites.

Alain--

I tinkered with the software this morning, and I love it! It gives me what I need without a lot of hassle. Well done.

I sent you a registration e-mail, but I guess you can consider that a request to be a beta tester. I'm fine either way. As is, the software is worth at least the $20 registration fee.

Preliminary suggestions:

I think your installation instructions could stand to be tweaked for each version of Windows. I am using Windows 7 Professional, and things were a bit different from what you outlined. I handled it fine, but others might be thrown off.

That grid to the right of the sound shape graph is super helpful. Is there a way to show that data for each of the five taps saved when you use the Keep function? I am probably missing how to go back and look at that data for taps 1 through 4. If I'm not missing it (i.e., it's not there), I suggest adding a way of going back and looking at that grid for all 5 taps that are saved.

These are mere quibbles. Again, well done.

Alain, as others have said, congratulations for doing this work.

I need to spend more time with the software before I can make a sensible comment but at first glance it looks great.

I wonder if you had thought of offering a signal generator for Chladni pattern work? This is a feature of Visual analyser that use for this purpose.

Dave

Thank you All for the good comments.
I am taking notes! May be I will not need the Beta testers after all!

I was wondering if it would be better to make an install program or not. Some people prefer to know what goes where on their computer, some other prefer the one click installation. This might be more convenient when I start sending updates.

Dave, not at this time, when I did Chladni patterns, I used a freeware called IIRC SweepGen. It was very easy to use

Update:
I have made several additions/improvements to LSA.
It now come with an installer , which may make things easier for some.
The "sound shape" graph and frequency table is now saved with the spectrum.
The cursor now show the frequency in the status bar, the decay/duration can be measured with a left click, Etc.
You can still get it from Google Drive at: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1X4FSJ ... uAeHgzvdnP
Or from my website at:
https://alainlambert.wixsite.com/luther ... m-analyser

LSA is now available for Mac users. You can find a copy Here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
Please consult the readme file for instructions. This has not been tested intensively, please report any problems.

The windows version is still available as usual: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

I've been using AudioTest by Katsura for about 14 years as a signal generator for the Mac. It looks similar to sweepgen. It has more features, but I haven't found a need for them. The frequency can be bumped by 1 Hz per click on the mouse scroll wheel, which is convenient. I sent a feature request to the developer a few years ago, and heard back, but haven't seen an update. My wishlist is be to be able to set the 1 Hz resolution to .5 Hz, and toggle on and off with the space bar. First world problems, I know.

This app from Alain looks great. Thanks, Alain!

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

LSA is now at version 1.7.
Also there is now a Linux version as well.

You can find the versions here:
Windows: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
MacOS: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
Linux: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Or all of them here: https://alainlambert.wixsite.com/luther ... m-analyser

You still get 7 days trial.
The major changes from previous version are:
New options added to Wave Charts window.
While “Keep” mode is on you can now select and load saved curves individually.
The status bar now indicate the frequency and note at the cursor as well as the next peak.
Revised Help files. Improved peak detection.

I'm going to jump in with a big kudos to Alain. I have been using the analyzer off and on for about six months now. I used it while selecting and voicing the top of a classical guitar, the response gave me the confidence that using fir might actually make a decent sounding guitar (it did). Its been interesting to compare different guitars to see if what I think I am hearing correlates to the frequency spectrum. And its been fun to do before and after plots of some change to a guitar - does a bone nut really sound different from the plastic one, is an expensive boutique pickup different from the stock one?

I'll probably install the upgrade today - once again, Alain, thank you for making this available.

ps - it would be interesting to see some sort of discussion forum for people using this software. For instance I can already see a need for a "calibrated plucker" - I've got some ideas but would like to see what others are doing.

Somehow I missed the June release of the Mac version. Just downloaded it this morning and am excited to start exploring. Thanks, Alain, for making this available.

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George :-)