Is There a Quantitative Spectrum Analyzer?

[hubblecup]

My son decided to build pickups for his seventh grade science project. His hypothesis has to do with the effect of various magnets, number of winds, and pickup positions relative to the bridge on the quantitative and qualitative sound of single coil pickups. So we bought a pickup winder and all the gear, assembled multiple different pickups in various combinations of number of winds and type of magnets. We took apart an old Strat that I never play anymore, and we recorded a bunch of string strikes into ProTools. We even built what we're calling a Plectrum Pendulum to mechanically limit variation in human picking of the string.

Now we're down to data analysis. One of the categories that we are recording is the number and power (dB) of each overtone, as well as the fundamental, produced by each pickup in each position relative to the bridge.

We started out using Blue Audio's FreqAnalyst, with the threshold set to a relatively high level (closer to 0dB) such that the specific overtones appear as bands on the graphic display.

The issue is this: We're still having to guess (sort of) at the frequencies and dB quantification. By "guess," I mean to say that we are reading the graph and estimating the pitch and dB. This is made slightly harder by the logarithmic nature of the dB scale. Part of the project involves learning to deal with numeric data using various mathematical techniques. His teacher will probably not like the idea of reading a coarsely demarcated graph as a way of generating repeatable and specific data.

My question is this: Is there a spectrum analyzer that either has a denser scale or has the capability to read the specific values of a cursor placed at a specific location on the GUI?

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.

[BScout]

Honestly, if you can finish this fairly fast, grab Izotope's RX (I think you don't even need RX advanced but a demo period is the same no matter what.) You can easily do that kind of analysis there (including highlighting sections of the waveform or spectrum and asking for an analysis from the modules on just that area.)

Also, for a science project you can create some "pretty" graphics with screen shots of the spectrographs. Should be a little more involving for viewers.

[musicman691]

I would give the HOFA IQ Series Analyzer a try; it can get in tight and may be able to do what you want. They do have a 14 day demo of it. To buy it isn't inexpensive though - $154.58 US for the it in either plugin or standalone form.