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oscillator, test tone, and sine waves, oh my!

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Topic oscillator, test tone, and sine waves, oh my!
I hear words like oscillator, test tone, sine waves, pink or white waves. I know that they are gotta have tools and

knowledge for a serious recording people. Can anyone help me in laymen terms, what they do and how I can use an oscillator

to improve my recording? I have Emu1212m soundcard and it has DSP which has some test-tone generating function.

thanks

unsaint
2
ok im no pro with this or anything but heres what im thinking they are

Oscillator: a device that will generate a tone at a set frequency.. synthesisers use oscillators to generate the noise. the more oscillators, usually the better the synth

Test tone: i believe these can be used to test the quality of your ADC (analogue to digital converter) and DSP's on your soundcard. if you are using a sine wave as a test tone then a good ADC will reproduce a perfect sine wave. a bad one will give a wobbly wave :P

Sine wave: wave derived from a mathmetical trigonometric function (sine). just basically up and down. You can change the frequency. this is the most simple wave.

White Noise: i think this is just 'static' noise. the intensity of the noise is the same at all the frequencies you generate it at.

pink noise: (the one i dont know about) ::A random signal of every frequency in the audio spectrum, in which each higher octave drops off 3 dB. The lower octaves have more power, and the higher octaves have less power. Pink noise is generated to test loudspeakers in a room as well as to "tune" a room for best audio reproduction.

Also known as "1/f noise," pink noise patterns have been found in music melodies, semiconductors and atomic clocks. They are also found in nature, including the sounds of wind and waterfalls. - from answers.com

anyway hope that helps
3
the_man361 got the answers pretty right.
the oscillator your thinking of is used in studios mainly to measure phase problems in audio.