Professional technicians have several options available to analyze audio signals. We can use an oscilloscope to look at the amplitude of a signal in the time domain. We can use a real-time audio analyzer to look at signals in the frequency domain. Thanks to the power of modern computers, we can combine both measurements to create a spectrogram to look at audio amplitude and frequency simultaneously. This article will explain a spectrogram and how to interpret its data.
Time-Domain Measurements
Before we dive into the spectrogram, let’s back up and look at the other two signal analysis tools. An oscilloscope has been a staple around car stereo shops for decades.