Reading the spectrum
The curve shows how loud each frequency is, from the lowest bass on the left to the highest treble on the right. A musical note appears as a row of peaks: the fundamental and its harmonics at two, three, four times its frequency. The strongest peaks are labelled with their note and how many cents they are off.
The spectrogram below shows the same over time: each column is a moment, low frequencies at the bottom, louder in brighter colours.
Settings
- Resolution: larger values separate close frequencies better but react more slowly.
- Averaging: slow smooths the curve, fast follows every change.
- Peak hold keeps the loudest level reached at each frequency for a moment; Freeze stops the picture so you can read it.