software to quantify sound waves?

There are commercial packages that will do that, ETF5 for instance, but I'm not sure of there are freeware versions, have you tried searching versiontracker?

 

I don't know how much experience you may have with it, but MATLAB can be used to get information from .wav file. For a project, I've made an equalizer with it - and I know you can look at the frequency properties with matlab.

 

When you say you want to quantify them what exactly do you want?

I use Amadeus ll from http://www.hairersoft.com to analyze the sound made by a pulse jet engine, its basically a big jet engine but it works on acoustics so has no moving parts.

I record the engine running then use the FFT function to get exact Harmonic information to see whats happening inside the engine with out using $$$$$ worth of pressure sensors just a good microphone.

It has a number of anlyses modes that you can use including a scope and waterfall FFT, it also records and has all the usuel commands and filters.

It works on a shareware license, I was so impressed that I paid the $30 to the guy for it, its saved me thousands.

Its also goddam fast, it rips a 65k point FFT on a 100mb file in seconds.

Hope that helps

Viv

 

I might also suggest octave or scilab. I believe they both have .wav capabilities, are completely free, and are very fast. If you let me know what exacty you're trying to do, I can probably give you a hand.

MP