Frequency Analyzers have been around nearly as long as oscilloscopes. Basically they’ll sweep a band pass filter and plot amplitude vs frequency on the screen.
Also - you can reproduce a sound by the frequency domain IF you look at the time progression of it.
Some Hammond Organs intentionally had a percussion control where the 3nd or 3rd harmonic would decay over time, giving the instrument timbre a bit of a pop.
Re:“Hearing” the Hammond Organ
by speedplane on Sunday February 24, 2019 @03:51AM
(#19237799)
> I'm more curious about how the physicist worked out a spectral plot by hand before sampling and FFTs were invented and oscilloscopes were barely a thing.
Before there were digital FFTs, there were analog equivalents. A prism basically does an FFT on light. I don't know, but I'd bet there were many analog based frequency analysis tools available before digital frequency analysis.
Instruments with dynamics - not a pipe organ, unless you include the swell pedal or some of the dynamic effects, like tremulant - the spectrum also varies with dynamics.
So generally, no, you can't accurately reproduce a sound with a single plot of the harmonics.
I'm more curious about how the physicist worked out a spectral plot by hand before sampling and FFTs were invented and oscilloscopes were barely a thing.
I'd guess he sketched the waveform from a scope plot, broke it down into points by hand, and performed a manual DFT - which must have taken quite a while.