WildSpectra Mobile

WildSpectra Mobile is an adaptation of my desktop application by the same name, WildSpectra (a collaborative effort with Dr. R. Haven Wiley), to the Android operating system. It provides real-time scrolling audio spectrograms (sonograms) on handheld computing devices. It also provides waveform and spectrum views, as well as a level meter. It supports both linear frequency scaling and logarithmic frequency scaling (aka octave-band analysis). Spectra can be presented as amplitude, power, or dB with a choice of color palette.

There are also additional tools for detecting the tick-tock beats from mechanical watches (pocket watches). This beat-counter and associated "loudness" trace (which taken together are similar in functionality to a conventional "timing machine") can be used to adjust (alter the balance of) or regulate (alter the regulator of) such a watch to improve its accuracy (see video below).

Once a recording has been made and resides in memory, a number of post-processing operations can be performed and the resulting recording can be saved or images of the spectrogram can be saved for later use.

Features:

• Up to 48kHz sampling rate on some devices.
• Multiple FFT transform-sizes and windowing functions.
• Multiple spectrogram views (amplitude, power, dB) and color palettes.
• Axis labels (time/frequency).
• Additional real-time views:
  • Waveform
  • Spectrum
  • 1/n octave-band spectrum (from 1 to 12 bands)
  • Level meter
  • Beat-counter "timing machine" (mechanical pocket watch regulation via regulator)
  • Integrated spectra (loudness) with beat-markers
• Post-processing routines:
  • Trim
  • Gain
  • Amplify
• Save/open WAV files.
• Inverted UI orients primary mic forward for improved audio response.

This screenshot shows the beat-counter (top) and integrated spectra (middle) which are used to profile and then adjust or regulate mechanical (pocket) watches:

This video presents a thorough walk-through of the beat-counting functionality and a tutorial on how to regulate a mechanical watch:

Obtaining the Software

WildSpectra Mobile is provided in a lite and a pro version. The lite version is free but has a few limitations. The pro version is quite affordable and can be found on the Android Market in the Multimedia section.

Note that in order to install Android applications over the web instead of through the Market, you must tell your phone to trust such downloads. Developers do this all the time so they can test their own applications before uploading them to the Market. To do this, go into the main phone Settings and choose the Applications subsettings. On that page you must check the Unknown sources checkbox. You can always uncheck it after downloading and installing the .apk file.

Download WildSpectra Mobile Lite (AndroidOS required)