Change block/boom spectrum analyzer to a logarithmic frequency scale by default
-
The spectrum analyzers in Strawberry are a nice visual feature in the app, but there's one small thing about them that bugs me: unless I'm mistaken, they operate on a linear frequency scale. Mathematically speaking, this means that the entire right half of the spectrum analyzer is occupied by the frequency band between about 10.025 kHz and 22.05 kHz on a standard CD-quality recording.
Practically speaking, this means that said entire right half covers only what our brains interpret as extremely high treble, basically only lit up when a cymbal crashes. It also means that actual melodic lines are extremely hard to pick out, given they only occupy a tiny portion of the spectrum analyzer's width—and even in that narrow band, they are almost always completely drowned out by every percussion instrument.
I've used a logarithmic spectrogram before, and I know that they can help with this problem. If the x-axis of the spectrogram used a logarithmic frequency scale, then it would be much easier to read for melodic information. Essentially this would mean devoting equal width to the band between 100 Hz and 1 kHz as to the band between 1 kHz and 10 kHz, etc. Unless it would require significantly higher computing resources to display, I believe it would be a nice, simple improvement to what is already probably the best music player on Linux. Thank you for considering my suggestion!
-
I just want to add my support to this suggestion. Most of the time the analyzer looks like this
where most of the right half is blank since it's devoted to higher frequencies above 10kHz which just don't occur at the same rate as lower frequencies in the 100-2000Hz range in most songs, and as @DWW256 points out, these high frequencies aren't audible most of the time. Right now, these low frequencies that we care more about take up only ~20% of the bar.