Applications of Matlab

Matlab is a not an easy package to learn, as you may have seen from going through the tutorial and getting started with it. The payoff for this is that it is a very powerful tool for, among other things, analyzing computer files containing sound called Wav files.

Wav files appear practically everywhere – on Windows based pc's, on Web pages, audio CDs. They contain voices, music and anything acoustical. Furthermore anyone can easily create them with nothing more than a pc and a microphone.

Matlab gives one the capability to get inside of Wav files and look at all the intricacies of the sounds recorded. No other commonly available software package can open Wav files and examine them – Maple, Mathcad, others.

The available materials here are organized as follows:

Wav files – background

What is a wave file?

How is a wave file structured?

Wav files – examining them with Matlab

Using Matlab to analyze wave files

Tuning fork wave file example

The All Important Zoom Feature

Specific applications

Tuning a Guitar

Challenging Exercises

The Mystery Tuning Fork