Re: [gentoo-user] Open Source DSP tools for learning?

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:21 AM, luis jure <ljc@internet.com.uy> wrote:
> on 2010-05-06 at 07:31 Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>>   Does anyone possibly know of any tools in Open Source for exploring
>>DSP filter design? Something that might allow me to write equations,
>>stimulate the filter, see the results in a GUI?
>
> i guess a general scientific tool like octave (a free alternative to
> matlab, the de facto standard among scientists) would do all you may
> possibly want to do, although learning the language might require some
> time. i don't know of any "ready-to-go" tool for dsp where you just put
> the coefficients and you get the poles, impulse and frequency response,
> etc. i would be very interested if anyone knows such tool.
>
> if you want to work with audio, you can easily program any filter in
> csound or any other software synthesis language, like pd, common lisp
> music or whatever (i know csound). then you can "see the results" using
> an analyser/visualiser like sonic-visualiser, for example.
>

Hi Luis,
   Thanks. Octave is something I'm looking at. It's clearly able to
model things like DSP filter response (both steady state as well as
impulse) but it doesn't seem like the right tool to actually learn
about doing DSP filter design.

   Someone else on another list suggested Faust but it's apparently
squirreled away in yet another overlay so I haven't bothered to load
it yet.

   It turns out for actual design just using the web might be one of
the better ways for me to go about this. There are lots of sites that
allow me to enter the characteristics I'm looking for and then give
back the results in z-transform, C code and other ways. Those look
fairly easy to transfer to code I can run.

   I appreciate your ideas.

Cheers,
Mark