Contents

Frequency Analysis using the DFT - A practical example

Extract a frame/window of length 2000 samples from Note 1
Extract a frame/window of length 5000 samples from Note 1
Extract a frame/window of length 5000 samples from Note 2
Analyse the DFT of the entire segment
A 'Better' Approach to higher frequency resolution
What happens if the frame length is too short??
Frequency Analysis using the DFT - A practical example
Youtube Video available at http://youtu.be/eg8eebQPfAo95 The tutorial shows how to analyse
the frequency content of a bass guitar to determine the fundamental frequencies of the notes
being played.
Matlab code will be available at http://dadorran.wordpress.com
% First download http://eleceng.dit.ie/dorran/matlab/bass.wav
[ip fs] = wavread( 'bass.wav');
Now extract a short segment from the guitar signal which contains two notes being played
over 0.45 seconds
seg = ip(670000:689000);
sound(seg, fs); %use this to hear the two notes being played
plot(seg);
xlabel('samples');
ylabel('Amplitude');

Annotate the figure to show where the two notes occur and indicate fundamental frequencies
annotation('doublearrow',[0.14 .45],[0.3 0.3]);
annotation('textbox',[0.14 .25 0.4 0.05], 'string',...
{'Note 1' 'Fundamental approx 72 Hz' },...
'LineStyle', 'none', 'HorizontalAlignment' ,'center');
annotation('doublearrow',[0.55 .85],[0.3 0.3]);
annotation('textbox',[0.55 .25 0.4 0.05], 'string',...
{'Note 2' 'Fundamental approx 86 Hz' },...
'LineStyle', 'none', 'HorizontalAlignment' ,'center');

Extract a frame/window of length 2000 samples from Note 1
Analyse the frequency content of the frame.
N = 2000;
frame = seg(1:N-1); % this is a frame associated with Note 1
ft_mags = abs(fft(frame));
num_bins_to_display = 250;
figure
plot([0:num_bins_to_display-1], ft_mags(1:num_bins_to_display))
xlabel('Frequency Bins' )
ylabel('Magnitude')

This plot shows that the signal has three 'strong' frequency componentsi.e. the fundamental
and first two harmonics
Let's try to determine the fundamental frequency by analysing the DFT. The fundamental is
the strongest frequency component present i.e. the maximum. By zooming in on the plot it
can be seen that it is located at bin number 3. Alternatively we can use matlabs built-in max
function.
[max_val fundamental_location] = max(ft_mags);
% NOTE : fundamental_location uses matlabs indexing which is
% different to bin number by 1
Each bin is separated by fs/N Hz so the fundamental frequency determined from analysis of
this magnitude spectrum is 3(fs/N) NOTE : the fundamental_location variable obtained from
the max function uses matlabs indexing which is different to the bin number by 1.
fundamental_frequency = (fundamental_location-1)*fs/N
fundamental_frequency =
66.1500
This result of 66.15 Hz is inaccurate (the fundamental frequency is actually about 72 Hz). The
inaccuracy arises due to the limitation of the DFT frequency resolution. We can only be sure
that the result obtained using this type of analysis is accurate to within fs/N = 22.05 Hz.
Extract a frame/window of length 5000 samples from Note 1
This increases frequency resolution and improves the accuracy of the analysis.
N = 5000;
frame = seg(1:N-1);
ft_mags = abs(fft(frame));
num_bins_to_display = 250;
plot([0:num_bins_to_display-1], ft_mags(1:num_bins_to_display))
xlabel('Frequency Bins' )
ylabel('Magnitude')
title('Magnitude of First 250 DFT bins of Note 1' )

Notice that the fundamental and harmonics are separated by a greater number of DFT bins
than for N = 2000.
Now, determine fundamental frequency using the same technique as before.
[max_val fundamental_location] = max(ft_mags);
fundamental_frequency = (fundamental_location-1)*fs/N
fundamental_frequency =
70.5600
The result of 70.56 Hz is more accurate because the DFT frequency resolution is higher. For
this case we can be sure that the result will be within fs/N = 8.82 Hz of the actual
fundamental frequency.
Extract a frame/window of length 5000 samples from Note 2
N = 5000;
%extract samples from the end of the segment
frame = seg(end-N:end);
ft_mags = abs(fft(frame));
num_bins_to_display = 250;
figure;
plot([0:num_bins_to_display-1], ft_mags(1:num_bins_to_display))
xlabel('Frequency Bins' )
ylabel('Magnitude')
title('Magnitude of First 250 DFT bins of Note 2' )

Determine fundamental frequency using the same technique as above
[max_val fundamental_location] = max(ft_mags);
fundamental_frequency_note2 = (fundamental_location-1)*fs/N
fundamental_frequency_note2 =
88.2000
This result is close to the actual fundamental frequency of 86Hz. Further improvement will be
obtained if N is increased further (as shown in the next section)
Analyse the DFT of the entire segment
The resolution is higher than previous analysis
N = length(seg);
ft_mags = abs(fft(seg));
num_bins_to_display = 250;
figure;
plot([0:num_bins_to_display-1], ft_mags(1:num_bins_to_display))
xlabel('Frequency Bins' )
ylabel('Magnitude')
title('Magnitude of First 250 DFT bins of both notes' )

This code might be tricky to follow - I'm just highlighting the fundamental and first two
harmonics of each note in the plot. don't worry if this part of the code is confusing.
note1_fund_freq = 72;
note2_fund_freq = 86;
ft1 = ones(1, length(ft_mags))*NaN;
ft2 = ones(1, length(ft_mags))*NaN;
for k = 1: 3
ft1(round(note1_fund_freq*k/fs*N) ...
+ 1 - 3:round(note1_fund_freq*k/fs*N)+ 1+ 3) ...
= ft_mags(round(note1_fund_freq*k/fs*N)+1 - 3: ...
round(note1_fund_freq*k/fs*N)+ 1+ 3);
ft2(round(note2_fund_freq*k/fs*N) ...
+ 1 - 3:round(note2_fund_freq*k/fs*N)+ 1+ 3) ...
= ft_mags(round(note2_fund_freq*k/fs*N)+1 - 3: ...
round(note2_fund_freq*k/fs*N)+ 1+ 3);
end
hold on
plot([0:num_bins_to_display-1], ft1(1:num_bins_to_display), 'r')
plot([0:num_bins_to_display-1], ft2(1:num_bins_to_display), 'g')
legend('','Note 1 fundamental and harmonics' ,...
'Note 2 fundamental and harmonics' )

%Determine fundamental frequency using the same technique
% as above.
[max_val fundamental_location] = max(ft_mags);
fundamental_frequency_note1 = (fundamental_location-1)*fs/N
fundamental_frequency_note1 =
71.9488
From the plot it can be seen that the frequency of the fundamental of the second note is
associated with bin 37 (no need to subtract 1 in equation below because the max function
isn't being used).
fundamental_frequency_note2 = 37*fs/N
fundamental_frequency_note2 =
85.8744
A 'Better' Approach to higher frequency resolution
While improvements in results have been obtained using a longer window the plot of the
magnitude spectrum is becoming more difficult to interpret as there is a lot of spectral energy
in the signal (energy from two notes rather than one). It would be nicer to be able to get higher
frequency resolution without the problem of the magnitude spectrum becoming more difficult
to interpret.
The way to get improved resolution without having a more complicated spectrum to deal with
is to 'artificially' make the signal longer through a process known as zero padding (see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_dxWuWw8yM for a tutorial on zero padding and
windowing).
We'll go back to the case where we extracted the first 5000 samples of note 1 and then
append 40,000 samples of zero amplitude to this signal.
N = 5000;
frame = seg(1:N-1);
% Make the frame 'longer' by zero-padding 40000 samples of
% amplitude zero
zpad_frame = [frame ;zeros(40000,1)];
new_frame_len = length(zpad_frame);
figure
plot(zpad_frame)
xlabel('samples')
ylabel('Amplitude')
title(...
'First 5000 samples of Note 1 zero-padded by 40000 zero samples' )

Now plot the magnitude spectrum as before
ft_mags = abs(fft(zpad_frame));
num_bins_to_display = 250;
figure
plot([0:num_bins_to_display-1], ft_mags(1:num_bins_to_display))
xlabel('Frequency Bins' )
ylabel('Magnitude')
title('Magnitude of First 250 DFT bins of Note 1' )

Now, determine fundamental frequency using the same technique as before. NOTICE that the
frequency resolution is now fs/new_frame_len
[max_val fundamental_location] = max(ft_mags);
fundamental_frequency = (fundamental_location-1)*fs/new_frame_len
fundamental_frequency =
71.5416
This result is accurate to fs/new_frame_len Hz
fs/new_frame_len
ans =
0.9800
If the frame was zero padded by a greater amount then the frequency resolution would
improve and therefore the accuracy of the frequency estimate would improve.
What happens if the frame length is too short??
We've seen in the examples so far that the separation between fundamental and harmonics
increases as the frequency resolution increases. It follows that the separation between
harmonics will decrease as the the frequency resolution decreases. If the frequency resolution
can be so low that the harmonics will not be separated.
Let's see what happens if we take frame length of 1500 samples
N = 1500;
frame = seg(1:N-1); % this is a frame associated with Note 1
ft_mags = abs(fft(frame));
num_bins_to_display = 100;
figure
plot([0:num_bins_to_display-1], ft_mags(1:num_bins_to_display))
xlabel('Frequency Bins' )
ylabel('Magnitude')
title('Magnitude of First 100 DFT bins of Note 1' )

Notice that only the first 50 bins are shown in this case - this is to make it easier to see the harmonics.
It can be seen that the harmonics are very close together - in fact they are only separated by 1 bin!
If a lower frequency resolution analysis is performed the harmonics will not be separated at all.
Let's see what happens if we take frame length of 1200 samples
N = 1200;
frame = seg(1:N-1); % this is a frame associated with Note 1
ft_mags = abs(fft(frame));
num_bins_to_display = 100;
figure
plot([0:num_bins_to_display-1], ft_mags(1:num_bins_to_display))
xlabel('Frequency Bins' )
ylabel('Magnitude')
title('Magnitude of First 100 DFT bins of Note 1' )

At this stage there is now separation between the higher harmonics
Let's see what happens if we take frame length of 1000 samples
N = 1000;
frame = seg(1:N-1); % this is a frame associated with Note 1
ft_mags = abs(fft(frame));
num_bins_to_display = 100;
figure
plot([0:num_bins_to_display-1], ft_mags(1:num_bins_to_display))
xlabel('Frequency Bins' )
ylabel('Magnitude')
title('Magnitude of First 100 DFT bins of Note 1' )

There is no separation between fundamental or harmonics - the frequency resolution is too
low. Looking at this magnitude spectrum you would probably interpret it to mean that there
was one sinusoidal component present in the signal (or perhaps two given the small peak at
bin 10)
To the uninitiated the solution to this problem might be to zero pad the frame in order to
improve the frequency resolution. However, this doesn't work. An indepth discussion as to
reason why it doesn't work is beyond the scope of this tutorial (as it requires a very good
understanding of how the DFT works) but a basic conceptual understanding can be obtained
by considering an extreme case whereby you extracted a frame of which is just of length 1
sample. If you only have only sample it would be impossible to determine any frequency
domain information since frequency relates to the rate of change of samples. Even if you had
two samples you still have a very limited view of the frequency of the signal and no amount of
zero padding will help. Hopefully you can appreciate that you need some number of
time-domain samples in order to extract out useful frequency content. As a general rule you
need at least one cycle of a periodic signal to in order to be able to extract 'useful' frequency
content associated with the signal. It is only when you have a sufficient amount of
time-domain data that zero-padding can be used to obtain more accurate frequency
estimates.
Published with MATLAB 7.0