SHAART Acoustic Tools

SHAART Acoustic Tools, v 0.81 (March 28, 2025) <img src="images/shaart_logo.jpg"> (yes, the name is a joke) <a href="#about">About</a>    <a href="#features">Features</a>    <a href="#downloads">Downloads</a>    <a href="#license">License</a>    <a href="#tutorial">Tutorials</a>    <a href="#screenshots">Screenshots</a>    <a href="#source">Running From Source</a>    <a href="#build">Building an Executable</a>    <a href="#faq">FAQ</a>    <a href="#notes">Release Notes</a>

About

This lightweight audio analysis suite was initially written for educational purposes only over a period of 4 days. (And then improved in bits.) It's amazing how much you can accomplish with minimal knowledge of Python programming!

The name "SHAART" uses the author's initials (S.H.) in homage to the famous "SMAART" set of acoustics analysis tools by Rational Acoustics, Inc. ...That and "SHAART" is just hilarious to say, for other reasons. (Note: "homage" = parody, derivative work = fair use = please don't sue.)

Features

Most of these features are illustrated in the <a href="#screenshots">Screenshots</a> section further down this page.

Reverberation Time (RT60) Measurement: The reason SHAART was written in the first place. Load an audio file, filter in different octave bands, draw a "best fit" line on the graph by hand, read off the reverb time. (Designed to mimic functionality of SMAART Acoustics Tools(tm).) Can show two files ("File A" and "File B") at once. See <a href="#tutorial">Tutorials</a> for more on this feature.
Waveform Display: Linear scale only. Displays two waveforms ("File A" and "File B") at once.
Power Spectrum: Pretty standard display Doesn't do a log scale yet, though I'd like to add that. Displays two spectra ("File A" and "File B" at once.)
Spectrogram: Shows magnitude as color, vs frequency and time. as with Power Spectrum. Offers a few colormaps. No log freq scale yet. Only one file ("File A") shown.
Waterfall Plot: Alternative to Spectrogram, shows magnitude surface a function of time & frequency. No log freq scale yet. Only one file ("File A") shown.
"Inverse Spectrogram" (Image-To-Audio): Import an image, output audio for which the spectrogram will resemble that image. Sounds a little "phasey," could be cleaner. Useful for demonstrating audio effects. See "Screenshots," below.
Room Mode Calculator: Uses the Rayleigh equation for standing waves of a 3D box, and also plots a "Fake Room Response" by assigning relative amplitudes to axial, tangential, and oblique modes. Useful for demonstrating mode distributions for different room shapes.
Sabine Equation Calculator: Assumes a box-shaped room, lets you apply absorption to different surfaces. Based on Chapter 8 of Berg & Stork textbook, including their table for absorption coefficients.
Equation-to-Audio: Specify a time-dependent function, and it'll generate audio from that. Useful for sine sweeps, e.g. for building impulse responses using Convolution (below)
Convolution: Convolve File A with File B. Useful for making impulse responses from sine sweeps, or creating convolution reverb effects, or just for screwing around (e.g., convolving Led Zeppelin's "The Ocean" with the sound of a dog bark.)
Play(/Record): Very rudimentary. Will play the audio out the speaker, with no controls. Record doesn't work yet.

Downloads

Mac Binary application (93 MB)
Windows executable (361 MB). Note that the Windows EXE takes a while to come up when you first run it.
Linux executable (132 MB, Pop!_OS / Ubuntu). You can also <a href="#source">run from source</a> (below)
Source code (GitHub) (in Python) See <a href="#source">Running From Source</a> below for further instructions.
Sample WAV file

License

2013 - 2015: This software is both "Open Source" and "Free," released under the Jesus license: "Freely you have received, freely give" (Matthew 10:8). Do as you like. Modify, redistribute, etc.

2015+: GPL 2. See LICENSE.md file.

Tutorials

General Instructions: Go up to the "File" tab and select an audio file to analyze.

TODO: Add more here
Measuring Reverb Times with SHAART
Creating Impulse Responses with SHAART

Screenshots

rt60

power

The spectrogram and waterfall plot (below) only show File A:

spectro

waterfall

Note: The following 'Theoretical Steady-Steate Room Response' is pretty fake; it's just a bunch of superimposed parabolae, but without it this pane had a bunch of empty space: modes

The values of absorption coefficients for the Sabine calculator come from the table in Chapter 8 of the Berg & Stork textbook:

sabine

The "invSpectro" feature created the file mandrill.wav which has a spectrogram shown below:

mandrill_spectro And interestingly, if the audio is encoded as an MP3, then re-read and re-written as a WAV, one can see the "lossyness" of the MP3: mandrill_mp3 One can also apply various audio effects to the sound and see the effect on the image, e.g. echo: echo

Wah-wah: wah

Reverb: reverb

And here's an interesting one: a "leveler" effect: leveler

Running from Source

Running SHAART.py from source: Create a new Python environment and install dependencies:

pip install librosa pyqt6 pillow pyaudio numpy matplotlib

Then run...

cd SHAART/source
./SHAART.py

Building an Executable

First follow the instructions above for running from source. Then we will proceed by using pyinstaller, that will create a new directory called SHAART/source/dist/, in which a successful build will result in the presence of working binary executable.

pip install pyinstaller

Mac

In order to run from source, you'd already need to have XCode, the command-line tools, and HomeBrew installed. Then in we install python.app and an older versions of a few things to build the app:

pyinstaller SHAART.spec

...and you'll find SHAART.app in source/dist/.

Linux (Pop!_OS / Ubuntu)

We could re-use the .spec file from the Mac build, but it would give us a whole directory instead of one executable. Instead, run this line:

pyinstaller SHAART.spec

...And then you can just run the dist/SHAART executable from the command line. (Note: I can't seem to get it to be a "clickable icon" in Nautilus/Gnome. Not sure how to do that.)

Windows

Here are the steps taken to build the Window EXE:

Download & Install Windows SDK: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk/
Download & Install Anaconda (64 bit): https://www.anaconda.com/

Run Anaconda Powershell prompt and install requirements:

conda install -c conda-forge ffmpeg
conda install -c anaconda pyqt pywin32 pypiwin32
conda install pyaudio librosa pywintypes

Downgrade setuptools to avoid conflicts pyinstaller as per https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/1963: pip install --upgrade 'setuptools<45.0.0'

Run pyinstaller with these arguments:

pyinstaller -w --icon=shaart_logo_icon.ico  --hidden-import="pypiwin32" --hidden-import="pywintypes" --hidden-import="sklearn.utils._cython_blas" --hidden-import="sklearn.neighbors._typedefs" --hidden-import="sklearn.neighbors.quad_tree" --hidden-import="sklearn.tree._utils" --onefile SHAART.py

Changing the GUI

Run QT's designer or Designer app (good luck finding this on your hard drive, btw; instead you might want to just download QT from the main site). Open ui_shaart.ui as an input file. Change the GUI as you like, save it, and then to generate the .py file, run

pyuic6 -x ui_shaart.ui -o ui_shaart.py

FAQ

You do realize what the name "SHAART" sounds like...? See "About" above. thatsthejoke.jpg
Can it only read WAV files? No. Despite saying WAV fil

SHAART

Install / Use

README