Help with Max! Sine wave frequency sweep

Tom Bellman's icon

Hi all,

I’m not very adept with Max MSP but I am going to be using it to complete my final year project at University.
I am basically testing peoples frequency response to see if they have lost any frequencies in their hearing over time.
All I need is a simple sine wave oscillator sweep (which I think I have, got this from another post, see below) but I need to be able to monitor which frequency is being produced so I can tell when the subject can no longer hear frequencies. So my cycle will be about 20Hz to 20kHz.
I also would need to be able to control the speed of the sweep, if there is a way to do this?
Also, would someone be able to explain what the message object is doing (15.48, 135.1 30000) I am intrigued.

Would really appreciate some help here!

Thanks very much.

frequency.maxpat
Max Patch
Jean-Francois Charles's icon

15.48, 135.1 30000
Go from 15.48 to 135.1 in 30000 milliseconds.
Go from 20 to 20000 in 40 seconds would read:
20, 20000 40000

brendan mccloskey's icon

Anecdotal question - is a pitch sweep/glissando the best solution? I underwent an extensive hearing test at my local ENT centre a few years ago, and I recall that the changing pitches were stepped (non-diatonically), rather than swept. The pitches were also panned - centre, left or right. I'm sure you've done your psychoacoustics research anyway ;)

Actually, I know just the person to ask . . . . (cut to commercial break)

Max Gardener's icon

The testing I've been involved with - as Brendan says - involved stepped frequencies. But I did have some kind of test for "my full nerve path," and it DID use the sweep.

My first thought when I saw the email title was that he was going to generate Impulse Responses for the Altiverb....

brendan mccloskey's icon

Yeah, those basilar membrane hairs are analog, not digital ;)

Tom Bellman's icon

Hi all,

Thanks for your responses and sorry for the late reply!
I just want to create a simple sine wave sweep so I can basically determine at what point the participants can no longer hear a frequency.
Would this be easy to do?

Thanks!

brendan mccloskey's icon

Hi
this is super-basic; it generates random frequency sine wave beeps. In practice you may have to take account of Fletcher-Munson curves, as they relate to our perception of the loudness of differing frequencies within our audible range; and you'll want to use objects like [capture], [coll] to record participants' responses.

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

Brendan

foldh's icon

Um, I really hope it's just my headphones that are bit poor when it comes to the high frequencies... ;)

brendan mccloskey's icon

for me, it is that, plus too many birthdays, plus 10 years in front of a Marshall stack ;)

Roman Thilenius's icon

your headphones are always the cause of you not hearing high frequencies any more - either way.