Linux sine wave audio generator

Question

I want to use my laptop as sinus generator under linux. But I have not found a program that can generate sound. Can someone tell me the right program or script for it. Thank you.

PS: I don't want use wine for it. PS2: I found this: "aoss siggen" and "speaker_test". But first ncurses based and second can not generate a continuous signal. May be you know more?

score 12 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 24 '11 at 19:01

12

If you want to generate sound files under linux, I recommend Sox

answered Feb 24 '11 at 19:01

Throwback1986

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Mmm, cool. Command sample: "play -n synth sin 1000 gain 1" – smex Feb 24 '11 at 19:08
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`gain 1` will make it clip. Don't add any gain, sin is already rail-to-rail. – dom0 Jan 03 '14 at 20:04

chris · Answer 2 · 2018-10-01T08:00:45.743

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Pulseaudio has a module for generating sine waves:

$ pactl load-module module-sine frequency=1000

And to make it stop:

$ pactl unload-module module-sine

edited Oct 01 '18 at 08:00

answered Feb 24 '11 at 19:10

chris

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+1 That's a fun thing... – Alba Mendez Mar 30 '13 at 13:25
I was going to add the most important part of the page in the answer because the link might die in the future, but it's ironically already dead. This is why we have this guideline for answers: https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer – Luc Feb 19 '16 at 19:07
Use `pactl load-module module-sine frequency=440; read; pactl unload-module module-sine` to make it stop after you press a key. – kralyk Dec 17 '18 at 18:25

Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com · Answer 3 · 2019-08-22T14:01:26.950

ffmpeg

ffmpeg can do it, as usual.

Create a 5 seconds mono 1000Hz sinusoidal out.wav sound file:

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
ffmpeg -f lavfi -i "sine=frequency=1000:duration=5" out.wav

Stereo instead:

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i "sine=frequency=1000:duration=5" -ac 2 out.wav

The file will be 2x as large, and ffprobe will say it has 2 channels instead of 1 channel.

Play the audio for 5 seconds without creating a file:

ffplay -f lavfi -i "sine=frequency=1000:duration=5" -autoexit -nodisp

Play forever until you go mad:

ffplay -f lavfi -i "sine=frequency=1000" -nodisp

Documentation:

The other section sunder Audio sources document other useful sound generation algorithms in addition to sine, e.g.:

anoisesrc: several noises
aevalsrc takes arbitrary mathematical expressions!

Bibliography:

Tested in Ubuntu 18.04, ffmpeg 3.4.6.

Minimal C audio generation example without extra libraries

Just for fun: How is audio represented with numbers in computers?

You could use `-v warning` to disable logging to stderr, if there are no warnings or some more serious problems. — jarno, Feb 28 '20 at 02:50
ffplay -f lavfi -i "sine=frequency=1000:duration='0.1'" -autoexit -nodisp # if you want duration less than a second. — xerostomus, Feb 08 '21 at 15:04

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 24 '11 at 18:53

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Today Linux uses the Alsa infrastructure for sound. Check out Alsa documentation and tutorials (for instance this one).

answered Feb 24 '11 at 18:53

ChrisJ

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And in particular see the sine wave generator example in the ALSA docs: http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/_2test_2pcm_8c-example.html – nos Feb 24 '11 at 18:55