How to convert a drawn waveform into a sound file?

September 4, 2005 9:31 PM

A friend of mine is looking for an application (Windows XP preferred, but other platforms might work) that will allow him to freeform draw a sound wave, and have it exported as an AIFF of WAV. Does anyone know of such a utility?
posted by jammer to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Adobe Audition (aka Cooledit) lets you modify individual samples of a sound wave. For instance, start a new document, generate a bit of silence, then zoom in as far as you can go, and individual samples will turn into knobs you can move around.

Audition also lets you read in text files of numbers, which it will turn into a wave form.

Orangator (old, no-longer developed, but still downloadable) lets you draw wave forms, and will use them as an oscillator.
posted by Jimbob at 9:44 PM on September 4, 2005

I do this with Photoshop. Save it out as RAW and open it as raw audio in your audio app, then export to wav or aiff.
posted by zerokey at 9:45 PM on September 4, 2005

(Should be noted that it's very very difficult to get "nice" sounds out of a hand drawn waveform. You end up with notes that contain many unwanted harmonics, often harmonics that are out of tune with the fundamental. But if you're after weird effects, it's good.)
posted by Jimbob at 9:55 PM on September 4, 2005

Hmm, I bet you could get "nicer" sounds with a program that read hand-drawn spectrographs.
posted by Eamon at 9:58 PM on September 4, 2005

Perhaps he should be playin with something like absytnth, where he can take a standard wave form, and then draw envelopes... What's he trying to do?
posted by atom128 at 10:05 PM on September 4, 2005

Hmm, I bet you could get "nicer" sounds with a program that read hand-drawn spectrographs.

Then you'd be after FruityLoops - it has a great plugin that does just this.
posted by Jimbob at 10:20 PM on September 4, 2005

zerokey: While that's one way of producing interesting sounds, that has absolutely nothing to do with what the poster is asking for. You're just reccomending a source of raw data - which, frankly, any image will do just fine. What he wants is a way to actually draw the shape of the wave.

I'm probably not explaining this very well.
posted by vernondalhart at 11:22 PM on September 4, 2005

And if your friend has access to a dos machine, download an old copy of Fast Tracker II. Oddly enough, it's "wave editor" lets you do just that by right clicking and dragging.
posted by vernondalhart at 11:25 PM on September 4, 2005

i saw something like this on monkeyfilter a while ago but i cant drag it up, otherwise have your friend check out fleximusic generator, kid composer, or the vOICe
posted by psychobum at 2:20 AM on September 5, 2005

more here
posted by psychobum at 2:28 AM on September 5, 2005

and yet another one, plus a cool wired article about how aphex twin put an image in his music
posted by psychobum at 2:31 AM on September 5, 2005