Is it true HAD used a spectrum analyzer to tweak his amps?

[BobW]

It certainly makes sense but imagine it also opens up the chance for countless iterations to tweak the amp for improving harmonics (within reason). Knowing how to tweak the amp based on what we know now is an excellent beginning and could possibly make the task easier.
I don't own an analyzer but would be interested to find out if it is really possible to tweak an amp mostly based on the analyzer? A simple scope bias method has proven, at least to me, you can't rely on waveforms alone for tone. Hmm...I may answered my own question. Any thoughts on this?

[Robert]

I considered buying one for the very same reason, but after giving it some thought (I have a degree in biology), I would say you already own a pretty good harmonic/frequency analyzer and it sits between your two ears. No easy way around hard (tweaking) work. Perhaps the electronics engineers know better.

[oldmacman]

Why not use your computer? You don't need to analyze anything outside of the audio spectrum, so your sound card would do just fine, as long as you didn't feed it too high of a signal (be careful not to fry anything).

[Noel Grassy]

Why not use your computer? You don't need to analyze anything outside of the audio spectrum, so your sound card would do just fine, as long as you didn't feed it too high of a signal (be careful not to fry anything).

I'm a little old and hella feeble so I don't get all this computer using stuff. How does one get a frequency analizer from their computer? Is there a stand alone program you refer to? Sorry if this is a dumb question, computer nube.

[Normster]

I don't know if it's true or not, but here's an intersting presentation on "The Sound of Distortion" that discusses audio spectrum analysis.
http://www.pmillett.com/file%20download ... ortion.pdf

It makes sense that HAD would start with a fundamental and then introduce just the right higher order harmonics to color the frequency. After all, it's not the purity of tone that we're after, but the harmonic complexity. As Robert said, we already possess a pretty sophisticated analyzer between our ears, but being able to shape the tone one stage at a time might be far easier with a visual tool.

[BobW]

I'm not too computer savvy either, so any info on using the sound card as a spectrum analyzer is appreciated. FWIW, a scope is in a time domain and an analyzer is in a frequency domain. It would be a fun experiment to give this a try. thanks Bob

[oldmacman]

Try http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/7544 (I don't know of any equivalent for Windoze, but I'm sure there is one).

[fabiomayo]

Been lurking around all day (and didn't get ANY work done )...

First post here, so Hello, everyone! Thanks for all knowledge and resources you share around here.