What's a good way to examine audio with python and split it between high, mid and low pitches for visualizaton?

Question

So, I'm planning on trying out making a light organ with an Arduino and Python, communicating over serial to control the brightness of several LEDs. The computer will use the microphone or a playing MP3 to generate the data.

I'm not so sure how to handle the audio processing. What's a good option for python that can take either a playing audio file or microphone data (I'd prefer the microphone), and then split it into different frequency ranges and write the intensity to variables? Do I need to worry about overtones if I use the microphone?

See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1303307/fft-for-spectrograms-in-python — ʇsәɹoɈ, Aug 22 '11 at 22:52

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 23 '11 at 00:51

If you're not committed to using Python, you should also look at using PureData (PD) to handle the audio analysis. Interfacing PD to the Arduino is already a solved problem, and there are a lot of pre-existing components that make working with audio easy.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

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Try http://wiki.python.org/moin/Audio for links to various Python audio processing packages.

The audioop package has some basic waveform manipulation functions.

See also:

edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

Community

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answered Aug 22 '11 at 22:28

patrickmdnet

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 23 '11 at 00:11

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Portaudio has a Python interface that would let you read data off the microphone.

For the band splitting, you could use something like a band-pass filter feeding into an envelope follower -- one filter+follower for each frequency band of interest.

answered Aug 23 '11 at 00:11

Russell Borogove

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What's a good way to examine audio with python and split it between high, mid and low pitches for visualizaton?

3 Answers3