Tone and noise generator
What Tone and noise generator actually does
A tone generator is only useful if the tone is exactly what it claims, so this page treats its own output the way a reviewer would: after rendering, the file is decoded again and its dominant frequency is measured with a spectral scan, then printed next to the frequency requested. A generator that drifts, or writes a header its contents disagree with, fails visibly instead of shipping a confident wrong number. The signal menu covers the four shapes testing and synthesis actually use - sine for everything frequency-related, square for triggering and digital-style stimuli, sawtooth and triangle for harmonic-rich material - plus noise in the three colors worth distinguishing: white with equal energy per hertz, pink with equal energy per octave the way hearing weights it, and brown falling toward the lows. Amplitude is capped at full scale with headroom visible in the receipt, stereo duplication is explicit rather than assumed, and duration is validated up front because a zero-second render that exits successfully is worse than a refusal.
How to use it
- Pick a waveform shape or a noise color. Noise ignores the frequency field and says so.
- Set frequency, duration, amplitude, sample rate and channels. Out-of-range values refuse with the bound named.
- Generate, then read the receipt: measured dominant frequency against requested, measured duration against requested, channel count confirmed.
- Play the result and download it as a standard PCM WAV every player opens.
Useful for
- Test speakers, headphones and room response with tones swept by hand.
- Produce masking noise for sleep, focus or tinnitus relief at a controlled level.
- Create reference signals for calibrating recorders or checking signal chains end to end.
- Generate content for electronics, radio or hearing experiments with known spectra.
Limits worth knowing
- Output is 16-bit PCM WAV; compressed exports belong to the converter tool chained afterward.
- The frequency check applies to the pitched shapes; noise colors have no single peak and the receipt prints skip there rather than a fake number.
- Amplitudes near full scale can clip on playback hardware; the level is capped at digital full scale, not at what your speakers can survive.
Questions people ask
Which noise color should I use?
Pink for listening tests and masking, because it spends energy the way hearing distributes it; white for technical measurements where flat spectrum matters; brown for a deeper, rumbling character.
Why does my generated tone measure a hair off frequency?
The scan resolves to sub-hertz steps and the measurement agrees with the request to well under one percent; tiny deviations come from the discrete samples, not from drift.
Is anything uploaded?
No. Generation, measurement and playback all happen in this tab.