Getting correct sampling frequency, how to? - fft

I am trying to fully understand the sampling frequency concept. I got a useful answer from PaxRomana99 (I need help setting up the correct frequency vector) and it seems like the way to get the correct frequency vector is when you set up the time interval to be related to fs:
t = 0:1/fs:10; % 10 seconds of data sampled at fs
y = sin(2*pi*100.*t);
However, in my case, I have no control on how my time interval is set up, I am given 2 arrays, one is the time interval and one is the sinusoidal wave resulting from that time interval. So should I got through the time array and extract fs? which should be the spacing between the time steps? am I in the wrong path here?
Thanks for any hints and any help!

Yes, as you suggest, you get the sampling frequency from the time array. It's just 1/(time sample interval).

Related

Making sense of soundMixer.computeSpectrum

All examples that I can find on the Internet just visualize the result array of the function computeSpectrum, but I am tasked with something else.
I generate a music note and I need by analyzing the result array to be able to say what note is playing. I figured out that I need to set the second parameter of the function call 'FFTMode' to true and then it returns sound frequencies. I thought that really it should return only one non-zero value which I could use to determine what note I generated using Math.sin function, but it is not the case.
Can somebody suggest a way how I can accomplish the task? Using the soundMixer.computeSpectrum is a requirement because I am going to analyze more complex sounds later.
FFT will transform your signal window into set of Nyquist sine waves so unless 440Hz is one of them you will obtain more than just one nonzero value! For a single sine wave you would obtain 2 frequencies due to aliasing. Here an example:
As you can see for exact Nyquist frequency the FFT response is single peak but for nearby frequencies there are more peaks.
Due to shape of the signal you can obtain continuous spectrum with peaks instead of discrete values.
Frequency of i-th sample is f(i)=i*samplerate/N where i={0,1,2,3,4,...(N/2)-1} is sample index (first one is DC offset so not frequency for 0) and N is the count of samples passed to FFT.
So in case you want to detect some harmonics (multiples of single fundamental frequency) then set the samplerate and N so samplerate/N is that fundamental frequency or divider of it. That way you would obtain just one peak for harmonics sinwaves. Easing up the computations.

computing hourly amplitude from coordinate time series

I have a coordinate time series for 2 hours and 1 second interval (observation=7200). How can I compute the hourly amplitude from this data?
If your data does not contain noise (You did not say nothing about it), then you can calculate amplitude very easy by using definition of amplitude:
A = (max(x) - min(x))/2, where x - your data
P.S.
If you are not satisfied with the answer, then you need to clarify your question. In particular - what signal and what you mean by amplitude and how you going to use this number

understanding getByteTimeDomainData and getByteFrequencyData in web audio

The documentation for both of these methods are both very generic wherever I look. I would like to know what exactly I'm looking at with the returned arrays I'm getting from each method.
For getByteTimeDomainData, what time period is covered with each pass? I believe most oscopes cover a 32 millisecond span for each pass. Is that what is covered here as well? For the actual element values themselves, the range seems to be 0 - 255. Is this equivalent to -1 - +1 volts?
For getByteFrequencyData the frequencies covered is based on the sampling rate, so each index is an actual frequency, but what about the actual element values themselves? Is there a dB range that is equivalent to the values returned in the returned array?
getByteTimeDomainData (and the newer getFloatTimeDomainData) return an array of the size you requested - its frequencyBinCount, which is calculated as half of the requested fftSize. That array is, of course, at the current sampleRate exposed on the AudioContext, so if it's the default 2048 fftSize, frequencyBinCount will be 1024, and if your device is running at 44.1kHz, that will equate to around 23ms of data.
The byte values do range between 0-255, and yes, that maps to -1 to +1, so 128 is zero. (It's not volts, but full-range unitless values.)
If you use getFloatFrequencyData, the values returned are in dB; if you use the Byte version, the values are mapped based on minDecibels/maxDecibels (see the minDecibels/maxDecibels description).
Mozilla 's documentation describes the difference between getFloatTimeDomainData and getFloatFrequencyData, which I summarize below. Mozilla docs reference the Web Audio
experiment ; the voice-change-o-matic. The voice-change-o-matic illustrates the conceptual difference to me (it only works in my Firefox browser; it does not work in my Chrome browser).
TimeDomain/getFloatTimeDomainData
TimeDomain functions are over some span of time.
We often visualize TimeDomain data using oscilloscopes.
In other words:
we visualize TimeDomain data with a line chart,
where the x-axis (aka the "original domain") is time
and the y axis is a measure of a signal (aka the "amplitude").
Change the voice-change-o-matic "visualizer setting" to Sinewave to
see getFloatTimeDomainData(...)
Frequency/getFloatFrequencyData
Frequency functions (GetByteFrequencyData) are at a point in time; i.e. right now; "the current frequency data"
We sometimes see these in mp3 players/ "winamp bargraph style" music players (aka "equalizer" visualizations).
In other words:
we visualize Frequency data with a bar graph
where the x-axis (aka "domain") are frequencies or frequency bands
and the y-axis is the strength of each frequency band
Change the voice-change-o-matic "visualizer setting" to Frequency bars to see getFloatFrequencyData(...)
Fourier Transform (aka Fast Fourier Transform/FFT)
Another way to think about "time domain vs frequency" is shown the diagram below, from Fast Fourier Transform wikipedia
getFloatTimeDomainData gives you the chart on on the top (x-axis is Time)
getFloatFrequencyData gives you the chart on the bottom (x-axis is Frequency)
a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) converts the Time Domain data into Frequency data, in other words, FFT converts the first chart to the second chart.
cwilso has it backwards.
the time data array is the longer one (fftSize), and the frequency data array is the shorter one (half that, frequencyBinCount).
fftSize of 2048 at the usual sample rate of 44.1kHz means each sample has 1/44100 duration, you have 2048 samples at hand, and thus are covering a duration of 2048/44100 seconds, which 46 milliseconds, not 23 milliseconds. The frequencyBinCount is indeed 1024, but that refers to the frequency domain (as the name suggests), not the time domain, and it the computation 1024/44100, in this context, is about as meaningful as adding your birth date to the fftSize.
A little math illustrating what's happening: Fourier transform is a 'vector space isomorphism', that is, a mapping going bijectively (i.e., reversible) between 2 vector spaces of the same dimension; the 'time domain' and the 'frequency domain.' The vector space dimension we have here (in both cases) is fftSize.
So where does the 'half' come from? The frequency domain coefficients 'count double'. Either because they 'actually are' complex numbers, or because you have the 'sin' and the 'cos' flavor. Or, because you have a 'magnitude' and a 'phase', which you'll understand if you know how complex numbers work. (Those are 3 ways to say the same in a different jargon, so to speak.)
I don't know why the API only gives us half of the relevant numbers when it comes to frequency - I can only guess. And my guess is that those are the 'magnitude' numbers, and the 'phase' numbers are thrown out. The reason that this is my guess is that in applications, magnitude is far more important than phase. Still, I'm quite surprised that the API throws out information, and I'd be glad if some expert who actually knows (and isn't guessing) can confirm that it's indeed the magnitude. Or - even better (I love to learn) - correct me.

Temperature Scale in SA

First, this is not a question about temperature iteration counts or automatically optimized scheduling. It's how the data magnitude relates to the scaling of the exponentiation.
I'm using the classic formula:
if(delta < 0 || exp(-delta/tK) > random()) { // new state }
The input to the exp function is negative because delta/tK is positive, so the exp result is always less then 1. The random function also returns a value in the 0 to 1 range.
My test data is in the range 1 to 20, and the delta values are below 20. I pick a start temperature equal to the initial computed temperature of the system and linearly ramp down to 1.
In order to get SA to work, I have to scale tK. The working version uses:
exp(-delta/(tK * .001)) > random()
So how does the magnitude of tK relate to the magnitude of delta? I found the scaling factor by trial and error, and I don't understand why it's needed. To my understanding, as long as delta > tK and the step size and number of iterations are reasonable, it should work. In my test case, if I leave out the extra scale the temperature of the system does not decrease.
The various online sources I've looked at say nothing about working with real data. Sometimes they include the Boltzmann constant as a scale, but since I'm not simulating a physical particle system that doesn't help. Examples (typically with pseudocode) use values like 100 or 1000000.
So what am I missing? Is scaling another value that I must set by trial and error? It's bugging me because I don't just want to get this test case running, I want to understand the algorithm, and magic constants mean I don't know what's going on.
Classical SA has 2 parameters: startingTemperate and cooldownSchedule (= what you call scaling).
Configuring 2+ parameters is annoying, so in OptaPlanner's implementation, I automatically calculate the cooldownSchedule based on the timeGradiant (which is a double going from 0.0 to 1.0 during the solver time). This works well. As a guideline for the startingTemperature, I use the maximum score diff of a single move. For more information, see the docs.

Function to dampen a value

I have a list of documents each having a relevance score for a search query. I need older documents to have their relevance score dampened, to try to introduce their date in the ranking process. I already tried fiddling with functions such as 1/(1+date_difference), but the reciprocal function is too discriminating for close recent dates.
I was thinking maybe a mathematical function with range (0..1) and domain(0..x) to amplify their score, where the x-axis is the age of a document. It's best to explain what I further need from the function by an image:
Decaying behavior is often modeled well by an exponentional function (many decaying processes in nature also follow it). You would use 2 positive parameters A and B and get
y(x) = A exp(-B x)
Since you want a y-range [0,1] set A=1. Larger B give slower decays.
If a simple 1/(1+x) decreases too quickly too soon, a sigmoid function like 1/(1+e^-x) or the error function might be better suited to your purpose. Let the current date be somewhere in the negative numbers for such a function, and you can get a value that is current for some configurable time and then decreases towards a base value.
log((x+1)-age_of_document)
Where the base of the logarithm is (x+1). Note the x is as per your diagram and is the "threshold". If the age of the document is greater than x the score goes negative. Multiply by the maximum possible score to introduce scaling.
E.g. Domain = (0,10) with a maximum score of 10: 10*(log(11-x))/log(11)
A bit late, but as thiton says, you might want to use a sigmoid function instead, since it has a "floor" value for your long tail data points. E.g.:
0.8/(1+5^(x-3)) + 0.2 - You can adjust the constants 5 and 3 to control the slope of the curve. The 0.2 is where the floor will be.