SEEWAVE, A FREE MODULAR TOOL FOR SOUND ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS

TLDR

Seewave is a free, cross‑platform extension of the R environment. The paper reviews Seewave, a new software tool for analysing and synthesizing sounds. Seewave comprises 67 modular functions that enable time, amplitude, and frequency analyses, quantitative sound comparison, sound synthesis, batch processing, and can be extended with user‑written functions.

Abstract

ABSTRACT We review Seewave, new software for analysing and synthesizing sounds. Seewave is free and works on a wide variety of operating systems as an extension of the R operating environment. Its current 67 functions allow the user to achieve time, amplitude and frequency analyses, to estimate quantitative differences between sounds, and to generate new sounds for playback experiments. Thanks to its implementation in the R environment, Seewave is fully modular. All functions can be combined for complex data acquisition and graphical output, they can be part of important scripts for batch processing and they can be modified ad libitum. New functions can also be written, making Seewave a truly open-source tool.