David's Sweep Generator

Safety Notice

This HTML documentation has arrived after the bulk of the work on SweepGen was done, so there is quite a lot in the ReadMe.txt that is duplicated here. I didn't want to remove anything from the ReadMe.txt, since I always go there first after downloading something to see what it's about, and I presumed you might want to do the same. So I've provided a brief overview below, a little note on phase checks (new in version 2.1), and some details about using SweepGen showing what the various controls are for. This is really for clarification, as I hope that most controls are easy to understand.

Overview

SweepGen turns a sound-equipped PC into an Audio Oscillator and Sweep Generator. In conjunction with audio test instruments, you can make frequency response plots. SweepGen uses the sound card in your PC to produce sinewaves that are mathematically correct almost to CD quality, indeed it's more likely that the quality of your PC sound card will be the limiting factor rather than the code in SweepGen. If you are interested in programming the sound hardware at a low level under Windows, you may find SweepGen's source code helpful in understanding the programming techniques involved.

Phase Checks

There are three modes of output operation. Normally, both left and right channels are indentical, i.e. in-phase. Optionally, you can make the channels out-of-phase which can be useful for checking the relative phase of a pair of loudspeakers. If the two speakers are out of phase, there will be less bass response. The channels option allows you to hear this effect directly. The third output mode provides for independent control of channel amplitude. The program does not provide a mono-summed mode where two different frequencies at different amplitudes are fed equally to each channel.

This page last revised: 1997 October 05