Sound library
Every sound has a signature.
Choose an instrument and see what makes it unique: its timbre, its attack and its harmonics.
All 49 sources can be heard, synthesised by Hearwise. Real recordings and measurements await verified licences.
Plucked strings
Electric guitar
A2 (110 Hz), open A string
The colour of a sound: what tells two instruments apart when they play the same note at the same loudness.
Warm and woody, very rich in harmonics the instant the string is plucked.
Waveform rebuilt from these harmonics
ModelHow the sound is made
A plucked string vibrates; magnetic pickups capture its vibration, and the amplifier and speaker do the rest.
- Indicative range
- 82 Hz – 1.3 kHzFundamentals, depending on the note played
- Synthesised example
- Electric guitar
- Real recording
- Not available yet
Library
Sound sources, by family
Every source can be heard: an example synthesised by Hearwise from a model of how it makes its sound. These are not recordings; real recordings will come once their licence has been verified.
- Sources
- 49
- Playable
- 49
- Synthesised
- 49
- Real recordings
- 0
Plucked strings7
Keyboards6
Percussion11
Voices7
Bowed strings4
Winds7
Electronic sources7
- Model
- Simplified teaching representation, built from typical orders of magnitude — not a measurement of a recording.
- Example
- A synthesised tone from the audio engine illustrating a notion: not a recording of an instrument.
- Measurement
- Analysis of a real recording by the audio engine. Available with the first sound examples.