Hi - I'm interested in evaluating CD tracks for a particular application of music and, having recently purchased a suite of Blue Cat plugins, am delighted with what I can do with these great products.

Does anybody know how I could overlay a template showing upper and lower limits into FrequAnalyst Pro, so that I could evaluate a track to determine whether it fits within these limits?
Thanks
Stan

Hi, Stan, and welcome to KVR. In your place, I'd make up a customized skin for FreqAnalyst Pro. Here's Blue Cat's tutorial page for skin makers: http://www.bluecataudio.com/Skins/Create/

I've not tried this with FreqAnalyst, but it ought not to be very hard to modify your favorite existing skin by replacing the background image with one that has marks showing the limits. The problem with this is that the marks would remain stationary (and so become incorrect) if you were to zoom or pan the frequency range. If you don't need to zoom this ought to work okay, but it feels crude to me.

I'm not sure whether the skinning language allows you to customize the dynamic grid but you've piqued my curiosity; I think I'll look into it. (I have FA Multi, not Pro, but can download the demo if need be.) I'll post more when I figure out how FA skins work.

Thanks, I haven't investigated the skin scene yet, but will look into that. Yup, it's a fascinating subject
Stan

Just tried replacing the small tile in C:\vst\64\Blue Cat FreqAnalyst Multi VST data\Skins\graph\graph_center.bmp with a graphic the size of the whole graph and Curves panel, adding left and right bracket symbols at 50 Hz and 5 kHz respectively. Any other notation could be used -- a box, band of a different color, whatever. It looks fine, except as I mentioned if you zoom or pan the brackets don't move with the grid.

If the unzoomed view is sufficient, and if your frequency criteria are fixed (or won't change so often that adjusting the file would be inconvenient) this would do what you need.

I didn't see any way to change the drawing of the graph's grid, but I didn't really dig deeply into the XML so I don't know whether that's possible.

I'm looking into this. In the meantime, what might work - and it seems it could solve the problem - is that if I select a track that could work as a template, by setting the Attack and Release times as well as the Precision setting, I can get a pretty smooth display and save the Average curve to one of the A,B,C,D slotsmd THEN using the Offset control, I can move it down to the desired lower limit, and save THAT to one of the other slots. Now, by saving the project as default, when I reload it, the information in the slots is still there, and when I load another track, I can set the offset to move it between the two saved slots, and then freeze the display at any time and zoom in to see how it compares.

You've just gotta be careful not to overwrite the saved slots.

Does this make sense?

Stam

Sure does, and it's less kludgey than my skinning idea. I'd go with your idea unless it turns out to work poorly in practice. You could even make a bandpassed noise track just to generate a comparison.

I'm working on this idea, and will get back when I've got something concrete to report. Thanks for the interest in the meantime.
Stan

You can indeed create a custom skin for that (it is also possible to create limits that can be zoomed, using a custom function, just like we did for the StereoScope Series).

Another idea (that may be easier if you are not a programmer) is to:
- use a white noise generator to create an audio signal with a flat spectrum (you can also find audio samples on the web).
- filter it using an EQ or any other type of filter with steep curves such as Blue Cat's MB-7 Mixer to define the lower and upper frequencies.
- send this signal into the FreqAnalyst Pro plug-in
- save the resulting curve into a memory slot
- save the preset (you can also set is as default so that it's loaded every time you instantiate the plug-in)

This way you will have a flat curve starting at your start frequency and ending at your end frequency that is completely integrated into the plug-in.

It is just an application of our tutorial that explains how to compare the spectrum across multiple projects, except that in this case your reference material is a bit particular (filtered white noise).

Hope this helps!

Where can I find a suitable white/pink noise plugin for Cubase LE5
Stan

There are a couple of threads about this on the web (like this one: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4814441). You can typically generate white noise samples with Audacity.