FFT Inaccuracy for C# - c#

Ive been experimenting with the FFT algorithm. I use NAudio along with a working code of the FFT algorithm from the internet. Based on my observations of the performance, the resulting pitch is inaccurate.
What happens is that I have an MIDI (generated from GuitarPro) converted to WAV file (44.1khz, 16-bit, mono) that contains a pitch progression starting from E2 (the lowest guitar note) up to about E6. What results is for the lower notes (around E2-B3) its generally very wrong. But reaching C4 its somewhat correct in that you can already see the proper progression (next note is C#4, then D4, etc.) However, the problem there is that the pitch detected is a half-note lower than the actual pitch (e.g. C4 should be the note but D#4 is displayed).
What do you think may be wrong? I can post the code if necessary. Thanks very much! Im still beginning to grasp the field of DSP.
Edit: Here is a rough scratch of what Im doing
byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];
int bytesRead;
do
{
bytesRead = stream16.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
} while (bytesRead != 0);
And then: (waveBuffer is simply a class that is there to convert the byte[] into float[] since the function only accepts float[])
public int Read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int bytesRead)
{
int frames = bytesRead / sizeof(float);
float pitch = DetectPitch(waveBuffer.FloatBuffer, frames);
}
And lastly: (Smbpitchfft is the class that has the FFT algo ... i believe theres nothing wrong with it so im not posting it here)
private float DetectPitch(float[] buffer, int inFrames)
{
Func<int, int, float> window = HammingWindow;
if (prevBuffer == null)
{
prevBuffer = new float[inFrames]; //only contains zeroes
}
// double frames since we are combining present and previous buffers
int frames = inFrames * 2;
if (fftBuffer == null)
{
fftBuffer = new float[frames * 2]; // times 2 because it is complex input
}
for (int n = 0; n < frames; n++)
{
if (n < inFrames)
{
fftBuffer[n * 2] = prevBuffer[n] * window(n, frames);
fftBuffer[n * 2 + 1] = 0; // need to clear out as fft modifies buffer
}
else
{
fftBuffer[n * 2] = buffer[n - inFrames] * window(n, frames);
fftBuffer[n * 2 + 1] = 0; // need to clear out as fft modifies buffer
}
}
SmbPitchShift.smbFft(fftBuffer, frames, -1);
}
And for interpreting the result:
float binSize = sampleRate / frames;
int minBin = (int)(82.407 / binSize); //lowest E string on the guitar
int maxBin = (int)(1244.508 / binSize); //highest E string on the guitar
float maxIntensity = 0f;
int maxBinIndex = 0;
for (int bin = minBin; bin <= maxBin; bin++)
{
float real = fftBuffer[bin * 2];
float imaginary = fftBuffer[bin * 2 + 1];
float intensity = real * real + imaginary * imaginary;
if (intensity > maxIntensity)
{
maxIntensity = intensity;
maxBinIndex = bin;
}
}
return binSize * maxBinIndex;
UPDATE (if anyone is still interested):
So, one of the answers below stated that the frequency peak from the FFT is not always equivalent to pitch. I understand that. But I wanted to try something for myself if that was the case (on the assumption that there are times in which the frequency peak IS the resulting pitch). So basically, I got 2 softwares (SpectraPLUS and FFTProperties by DewResearch ; credits to them) that is able to display the frequency-domain for the audio signals.
So here are the results of the frequency peaks in the time domain:
SpectraPLUS
and FFT Properties:
This was done using a test note of A2 (around 110Hz). Upon looking at the images, they have frequency peaks around the range of 102-112 Hz for SpectraPLUS and 108 Hz for FFT Properties. On my code, I get 104Hz (I use 8192 blocks and a samplerate of 44.1khz ... 8192 is then doubled to make it complex input so in the end, I get around 5Hz for binsize, as compared to the 10Hz binsize of SpectraPLUS).
So now Im a bit confused, since on the softwares they seem to return the correct result but on my code, I always get 104Hz (note that I have compared the FFT function that I used with others such as Math.Net and it seems to be correct).
Do you think that the problem may be with my interpretation of the data? Or do the softwares do some other thing before displaying the Frequency-Spectrum? Thanks!

It sounds like you may have an interpretation problem with your FFT output. A few random points:
the FFT has a finite resolution - each output bin has a resolution of Fs / N, where Fs is the sample rate and N is the size of the FFT
for notes which are low on the musical scale, the difference in frequency between successive notes is relatively small, so you will need a sufficiently large N to discrimninate between notes which are a semitone apart (see note 1 below)
the first bin (index 0) contains energy centered at 0 Hz but includes energy from +/- Fs / 2N
bin i contains energy centered at i * Fs / N but includes energy from +/- Fs / 2N either side of this center frequency
you will get spectral leakage from adjacent bins - how bad this is depends on what window function you use - no window (== rectangular window) and spectral leakage will be very bad (very broad peaks) - for frequency estimation you want to pick a window function that gives you sharp peaks
pitch is not the same thing as frequency - pitch is a percept, frequency is a physical quantity - the perceived pitch of a musical instrument may be slightly different from the fundamental frequency, depending on the type of instrument (some instruments do not even produce significant energy at their fundamental frequency, yet we still perceive their pitch as if the fundamental were present)
My best guess from the limited information available though is that perhaps you are "off by one" somewhere in your conversion of bin index to frequency, or perhaps your FFT is too small to give you sufficient resolution for the low notes, and you may need to increase N.
You can also improve your pitch estimation via several techniques, such as cepstral analysis, or by looking at the phase component of your FFT output and comparing it for successive FFTs (this allows for a more accurate frequency estimate within a bin for a given FFT size).
Notes
(1) Just to put some numbers on this, E2 is 82.4 Hz, F2 is 87.3 Hz, so you need a resolution somewhat better than 5 Hz to discriminate between the lowest two notes on a guitar (and much finer than this if you actually want to do, say, accurate tuning). At a 44.1 kHz sample then you probably need an FFT of at least N = 8192 to give you sufficient resolution (44100 / 8192 = 5.4 Hz), probably N = 16384 would be better.

I thought this might help you. I made some plots of the 6 open strings of a guitar. The code is in Python using pylab, which I recommend for experimenting:
# analyze distorted guitar notes from
# http://www.freesound.org/packsViewSingle.php?id=643
#
# 329.6 E - open 1st string
# 246.9 B - open 2nd string
# 196.0 G - open 3rd string
# 146.8 D - open 4th string
# 110.0 A - open 5th string
# 82.4 E - open 6th string
from pylab import *
import wave
fs = 44100.0
N = 8192 * 10
t = r_[:N] / fs
f = r_[:N/2+1] * fs / N
gtr_fun = [329.6, 246.9, 196.0, 146.8, 110.0, 82.4]
gtr_wav = [wave.open('dist_gtr_{0}.wav'.format(n),'r') for n in r_[1:7]]
gtr = [fromstring(g.readframes(N), dtype='int16') for g in gtr_wav]
gtr_t = [g / float64(max(abs(g))) for g in gtr]
gtr_f = [2 * abs(rfft(g)) / N for g in gtr_t]
def make_plots():
for n in r_[:len(gtr_t)]:
fig = figure()
fig.subplots_adjust(wspace=0.5, hspace=0.5)
subplot2grid((2,2), (0,0))
plot(t, gtr_t[n]); axis('tight')
title('String ' + str(n+1) + ' Waveform')
subplot2grid((2,2), (0,1))
plot(f, gtr_f[n]); axis('tight')
title('String ' + str(n+1) + ' DFT')
subplot2grid((2,2), (1,0), colspan=2)
M = int(gtr_fun[n] * 16.5 / fs * N)
plot(f[:M], gtr_f[n][:M]); axis('tight')
title('String ' + str(n+1) + ' DFT (16 Harmonics)')
if __name__ == '__main__':
make_plots()
show()
String 1, fundamental = 329.6 Hz:
String 2, fundamental = 246.9 Hz:
String 3, fundamental = 196.0 Hz:
String 4, fundamental = 146.8 Hz:
String 5, fundamental = 110.0 Hz:
String 6, fundamental = 82.4 Hz:
The fundamental frequency isn't always the dominant harmonic. It determines the spacing between harmonics of a periodic signal.

I had a similar question and the answer for me was to use Goertzel instead of FFT. If you know what tones you are looking for (MIDI) Goertzel is capable of detecting the tones to within one sinus wave (one cycle). It does this by generating the sinus wave of the sound and "placing it on top of the raw data" to see if it exist. FFT samples large amounts of data to provide an aproximate frequency spectrum.

Musical pitch is different from frequency peak. Pitch is a psycho-perceptual phenomena that may depend more on the overtones and such. The frequency of what a human would call the pitch could be missing or quite small in the actual signal spectra.
And a frequency peak in a spectrum can be different from any FFT bin center. The FFT bin center frequencies will change in frequency and spacing depending only on the FFT length and sample rate, not the spectra in the data.
So you have at least 2 problems with which to contend. There are a ton of academic papers on frequency estimation as well as the separate subject of pitch estimation. Start there.

Related

How can I create narrow band noise in C#?

My problem is very spesific. I want to create narrow band noise for my small wpf application. I am using NAudio library for creating a infinite stream of noise that can be stopped and started by user. I created Tone(Simple sinus wave), Warble(Sinus wave that is modulated by another wave) and White noise.
This is the class I use in order to make any ISampleProvider that is stereo be able to give sound to left, right or both depending what user wants.
using NAudio.Wave;
using System;
namespace AppForSoundCard
{
public class SignalStereoProvider : ISampleProvider
{
private readonly ISampleProvider sample;
public WaveFormat WaveFormat => sample.WaveFormat;
public float LeftVolume { get; set; }
public float RightVolume { get; set; }
public SignalStereoProvider(ISampleProvider sample)
{
if (sample.WaveFormat.Channels != 2)
throw new ArgumentException("Source sample provider must be stereo");
this.sample = sample;
}
public int Read(float[] buffer, int offset, int count)
{
int samplesRead = sample.Read(buffer, offset, count);
for (int n = 0; n < count; n += 2)
{
buffer[offset + n] *= LeftVolume;
buffer[offset + n + 1] *= RightVolume;
}
return samplesRead;
}
}
}
I use this code to generate audio stream that I mentioned. You will ask what is NarrowBand32 is. It is the class that supposed to generate narrowband noise from white noise. I will write it's code after next paragraph.
signalGenerator = new SignalGenerator();
signalGenerator.Type = SignalGeneratorType.White;
signalGenerator.Gain = 1.0;
signalGenerator.Frequency = Frequency;
narrowBand = new NarrowBandProvider32(signalGenerator, Frequency, 96000, 100, dB);
stereoProvider = new SignalStereoProvider(narrowBand)
{
RightVolume = !((ComboBoxItem)RoutingCombobox.SelectedItem).Tag.ToString().Equals("Left") ? (float)Math.Pow(10, (dB - 80) / 20.0) * (float)Settings.Default["ReferenceAmplitudeFor" + Frequency.ToString()] : 0.0f,
LeftVolume = !((ComboBoxItem)RoutingCombobox.SelectedItem).Tag.ToString().Equals("Right") ? (float)Math.Pow(10, (dB - 80) / 20.0) * (float)Settings.Default["ReferenceAmplitudeFor" + Frequency.ToString()] : 0.0f
};
Output.Init(stereoProvider);
I first generate an white noise using NAudio's SignalGenerator class. Then give it to the NarrowbandProvider32 that I wrote. Which suppose to make white noise narrowband. After all that I make the sound either go left or right or both.
Left and right volume is amplitute value for desibel value that is given by user. There is a combobox about routng in which you can choose, left, right, bilateral. Depending on your choise leftvolume is the apmlitute, right volume is the amplitute or both of them is amplitute.
I have visited several sites about how a narrowband noise can be generated. They were all suggesting bandpass filtering a white noise to generate narrow band noise. I tried that. It sort of did what I wanted but it was narrower than I wanted. You can find frequency response of the noise that I generated for 500 hz.
Here is the NarrowBand32 class code for that noise
using NAudio.Dsp;
using NAudio.Wave;
using System;
namespace AppForSoundCard
{
class NarrowBandProvider32 : ISampleProvider
{
ISampleProvider sample;
float lowFreq;
float highFreq;
BiQuadFilter biQuad;
public WaveFormat WaveFormat => sample.WaveFormat;
public NarrowBandProvider32(ISampleProvider sample, float frequency, float sampleRate, float q, float dB)
{
if (sample.WaveFormat.Channels != 2)
throw new ArgumentException("Source sample provider must be stereo");
this.sample = sample;
//Low and High frequency variables are defined like this in audiometry.
//these variables are the boundaries for narrowband noise
lowFreq = (float)Math.Round(frequency / Math.Pow(2, 1.0 / 4.0));
highFreq = (float)Math.Round(frequency * Math.Pow(2, 1.0 / 4.0));
biQuad = BiQuadFilter.BandPassFilterConstantSkirtGain(sampleRate, frequency, q);
biQuad.SetHighPassFilter(sampleRate, lowFreq, q);
biQuad.SetLowPassFilter(sampleRate, highFreq, q);
}
public int Read(float[] buffer, int offset, int count)
{
int samplesRead = sample.Read(buffer, offset, count);
for (int i = 0; i < samplesRead; i++)
buffer[offset + i] = biQuad.Transform(buffer[offset + i]);
return samplesRead;
}
}
}
Those the arguments I gave:
narrowBand = new NarrowBandProvider32(signalGenerator, Frequency, 96000, 100, dB);
As I said this noise is close to the narrowband noise that is defined in audiometry but it is more narrow. Narrowband noise for 500 hz in audiometry has this frequency response.
As you can see it is more wide than the noise that I generated. How can I genereate a narrowband noise that is close to narrowband noise in audiometry for any hz. I only gave examples of 500 hz for the images but in my code you can generate a noise between 150hz to 8000hz. What filter should I use to filter white noise in order to generate that type of narrowband noise. Any help is appreciated.
Edit:
I find a standart which explains how a narrowband noise should be for any frequency and desibel.
Where narrow-band masking is required, the noise band shall be centred geometrically
around the test frequency. The band limits for the masking noise are given in Table 4.
Outside these band limits the sound pressure spectrum density level of the noise shall fall at
a rate of at least 12 dB per octave for at least three octaves and outside these three octaves it
shall be at least 36 dB below the level at the centre frequency. Measurements are required in
the range from 31,5 kHz to 10 kHz for instruments limited to 8 kHz. For EHF instruments
measurements are required up to 20 kHz.
Due to limitations of transducers, ear simulators, acoustic couplers and mechanical couplers,
measurements of the bandwidth at 4 kHz and above may not accurately describe the
spectrum of the masking noise. Therefore at centre frequencies above 3,15 kHz
measurements shall be made electrically across the transducer terminals.
With that definition, I guess just an standart bandpass filter wouldn't work and I have to define a custom filter for the noise. Is there a C# library that allows defining custom filters. If there is how should I define the custom filter in order to make noises in that standart.
They were all suggesting bandpass filtering a white noise to generate narrow band noise. I tried that. It sort of did what I wanted but it was narrower than I wanted.
The approach of applying a bandpass filter to a white noise source makes sense. The problem is just that the bandpass filter design is too narrow. You can make it wider by reducing the q, moving the lowFreq and highFreq a bit outward, or switching to a different filter design method.
I suggest that rather than coding directly in C#, it might be useful to prototype this first in Python using the scipy.signal library, which has a various tools for designing and working with filters.
In the code below, I vary the c parameter to tweak the low and high edges of the band.
Code:
# Copyright 2022 Google LLC.
# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import scipy.signal as sig
fs = 96000 # Sample rate.
f0 = 500 # Center frequency in Hz.
# Generate noise with a few different bandwidths.
for c in [1.03, 1.07, 1.15]:
# Design a second-order Butterworth filter bandpass filter.
sos = sig.butter(2, [f0 / c, f0 * c], 'bandpass', output='sos', fs=fs)
# Generate white noise.
white_noise = np.random.randn(fs)
# Run it through the filter.
output = sig.sosfilt(sos, white_noise)
# Use Welch's method to estimate the PSD of the filtered noise.
f, psd = sig.welch(output, fs, nperseg=4096)
plt.semilogx(f, 10 * np.log10(psd), label=f'c = {c}')
plt.axvline(x=f0, color='k')
plt.xlim(50, fs/2)
plt.ylim(-140, -40)
plt.xlabel('Frequency (Hz)', fontsize=15)
plt.ylabel('PSD (dB)', fontsize=15)
plt.legend()
plt.show()
Output:

Can someone explain how this class (which generates a sine wave frequency that can be changed) works?

this is the code that i found online somewhere; it works quite well, but i dont fully understand how it convert a bunch of math into an audio wave:
public static void Beeps(int Amplitude, int Frequency, int Duration)
{
double A = ((Amplitude * (System.Math.Pow(2, 15))) / 1000) - 1;
double DeltaFT = 2 * Math.PI * Frequency / 44100.0;
int Samples = 441 * Duration / 10;
int Bytes = Samples * 4;
int[] Hdr =
{ 0X46464952, 36 + Bytes, 0X45564157,
0X20746D66, 16, 0X20001, 44100, 176400, 0X100004,
0X61746164, Bytes };
using (MemoryStream MS = new MemoryStream(44 + Bytes))
{
using (BinaryWriter BW = new BinaryWriter(MS))
{
for (int I = 0; I < Hdr.Length; I++)
{
BW.Write(Hdr[I]);
}
for (int T = 0; T < Samples; T++)
{
short Sample = System.Convert.ToInt16(A * Math.Sin(DeltaFT * T));
BW.Write(Sample);
BW.Write(Sample);
}
BW.Flush();
MS.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
using (SoundPlayer SP = new SoundPlayer(MS))
{
SP.PlaySync();
}
}
}
}
It looks like all it does is beep at certain pitches. The reason math converts into sound is because when the data is fed to your speaker, it's really bytes telling it how to vibrate during that instant.
If you're asking about how sound works, it's based on how vibrations move through the air. Vibrations exist as waves; they literally are shaking the air in certain patterns that your brain interprets as noise through your ears. If the sound has a higher pitch, the soundwaves are closer to each other, and if it's a lower pitch, they're further away. This is why a computer can "convert a bunch of math into an audio wave", because that's all sound really is: a constantly manipulated wave. That method takes a wavelength (Frequency) and creates a sine wave based on it, converts it to bytes, and feeds it to your speaker with a certain volume (Amplitude) and for a certain duration. Cool stuff right?
Also, you're looking at a "method", not a class. :)
Here's more about sound if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound#Sound_wave_properties_and_characteristics
This answer has a good overview of how wav files work:
Simply sample the waveform at fixed intervals, and write the amplitude at each interval into your file.
That's what the BW.Write calls are doing. T represents the Time.
In order to play the sound, that data goes after the Hdr section, which is simply the correct header for a standard .wav file. 0X46464952 is ascii for "RIFF" and 0X45564157 is "WAVE". The player needs to know what rate the wave was sampled at. In this case it's 44100, which is a common standard.

Convert Audio data in IeeeFloat buffer to PCM in buffer

I use NAudio to capture sound input and the input appears as a buffer containing the sound information in IeeeFloat format.
Now that I have this data in the buffer, I want to translate it to PCM at a different sampling rate.
I have already figured out how to convert from IeeeFloat to PCM, and also convert between mono and stereo. Converting the sampling rate is the tough one.
Any solution, preferable using NAudio, that can convert the IeeeFLoat buffer to a buffer with PCM format of choice (including changing sampling rate)?
If you want to resample while you receive data, then you need to perform input driven resampling. I wrote an article on this a while ago.
NAudio has some helper classes to go from mono to stereo, and float to PCM, but they tend to operate on IWaveProvider or ISampleProvider inputs. Typically if I just had the samples as a raw block of bytes I'd write by own simple code to go from float to PCM and double up the samples. It's not that hard to do and the WaveBuffer class will allow you to read float samples directly from a byte[].
I recently had to do this and couldn't find a built in way to do it, so I did just what Mark is talking about, converting the raw data manually. Below is code to downsample IeeeFloat (32 bit float samples), 48000 samples/second, 2 channels to 16 bit short, 16000 samples/second, 1 channel.
I hardcoded some things because my formats were known and fixed, but the same principles apply.
private DownsampleFile()
{
var file = {your file}
using (var reader = new NAudio.Wave.WaveFileReader(file.FullName))
using (var writer = new NAudio.Wave.WaveFileWriter({your output file}, MyWaveFormat))
{
float[] floats;
//a variable to flag the mod 3-ness of the current sample
//we're mapping 48000 --> 16000, so we need to average 3 source
//samples to make 1 output sample
var arity = -1;
var runningSamples = new short[3];
while ((floats = reader.ReadNextSampleFrame()) != null)
{
//simple average to collapse 2 channels into 1
float mono = (float)((double)floaters[0] + (double)floaters[1]) / 2;
//convert (-1, 1) range int to short
short sixteenbit = (short)(mono * 32767);
//the input is 48000Hz and the output is 16000Hz, so we need 1/3rd of the data points
//so save up 3 running samples and then mix and write to the file
arity = (arity + 1) % 3;
runningSamples[arity] = sixteenbit;
//on the third of 3 running samples
if (arity == 2)
{
//simple average of the 3 and put in the 0th position
runningSamples[0] = (short)(((int)runningSamples[0] + (int)runningSamples[1] + (int)runningSamples[2]) / 3);
//write the one 16 bit short to the output
writer.WriteData(runningSamples, 0, 1);
}
}
}
}

Detect a specific frequency/tone from raw wave-data

I am reading a raw wave stream coming from the microphone. (This part works as I can send it to the speaker and get a nice echo.)
For simplicity lets say I want to detect a DTMF-tone in the wave data. In reality I want to detect any frequency, not just those in DTMF. But I always know which frequency I am looking for.
I have tried running it through FFT, but it doesn't seem very efficient if I want high accuracy in the detection (say it is there for only 20 ms). I can detect it down to an accuracy of around 200 ms.
What are my options with regards to algorithms?
Are there any .Net libs for it?
You may want to look at the Goertzel algorithm if you're trying to detect specific frequencies such as DTMF input. There is a C# DTMF generator/detector library on Sourceforge based on this algorithm.
Very nice implementation of Goertzel is there. C# modification:
private double GoertzelFilter(float[] samples, double freq, int start, int end)
{
double sPrev = 0.0;
double sPrev2 = 0.0;
int i;
double normalizedfreq = freq / SIGNAL_SAMPLE_RATE;
double coeff = 2 * Math.Cos(2 * Math.PI * normalizedfreq);
for (i = start; i < end; i++)
{
double s = samples[i] + coeff * sPrev - sPrev2;
sPrev2 = sPrev;
sPrev = s;
}
double power = sPrev2 * sPrev2 + sPrev * sPrev - coeff * sPrev * sPrev2;
return power;
}
Works great for me.
Let's say that typical DTMF frequency is 200Hz - 1000Hz. Then you'd have to detect a signal based on between 4 and 20 cycles. FFT will not get you anywhere I guess, since you'll detect only multiples of 50Hz frequencies: this is a built in feature of FFT, increasing the number of samples will not solve your problem. You'll have to do something more clever.
Your best shot is to linear least-square fit your data to
h(t) = A cos (omega t) + B sin (omega t)
for a given omega (one of the DTMF frequencies). See this for details (in particular how to set a statistical significance level) and links to the litterature.
I found this as a simple implementation of Goertzel. Haven't gotten it to work yet (looking for wrong frequency?), but I thought I'd share it anywas. It is copied from this site.
public static double CalculateGoertzel(byte[] sample, double frequency, int samplerate)
{
double Skn, Skn1, Skn2;
Skn = Skn1 = Skn2 = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < sample.Length; i++)
{
Skn2 = Skn1;
Skn1 = Skn;
Skn = 2 * Math.Cos(2 * Math.PI * frequency / samplerate) * Skn1 - Skn2 + sample[i];
}
double WNk = Math.Exp(-2 * Math.PI * frequency / samplerate);
return 20 * Math.Log10(Math.Abs((Skn - WNk * Skn1)));
}
As far as any .NET libraries that do this try TAPIEx ToneDecoder.Net Component. I use it for detecting DTMF, but it can do custom tones as well.
I know this question is old, but maybe it will save someone else several days of searching and trying out code samples and libraries that just don't work.
Spectral Analysis.
All application where you extract frequencies from signals goes under field spectral analysis.

An implementation of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) in C# [closed]

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Where can I find a free, very quick, and reliable implementation of FFT in C#?
That can be used in a product? Or are there any restrictions?
The guy that did AForge did a fairly good job but it's not commercial quality. It's great to learn from but you can tell he was learning too so he has some pretty serious mistakes like assuming the size of an image instead of using the correct bits per pixel.
I'm not knocking the guy, I respect the heck out of him for learning all that and show us how to do it. I think he's a Ph.D now or at least he's about to be so he's really smart it's just not a commercially usable library.
The Math.Net library has its own weirdness when working with Fourier transforms and complex images/numbers. Like, if I'm not mistaken, it outputs the Fourier transform in human viewable format which is nice for humans if you want to look at a picture of the transform but it's not so good when you are expecting the data to be in a certain format (the normal format). I could be mistaken about that but I just remember there was some weirdness so I actually went to the original code they used for the Fourier stuff and it worked much better. (ExocortexDSP v1.2 http://www.exocortex.org/dsp/)
Math.net also had some other funkyness I didn't like when dealing with the data from the FFT, I can't remember what it was I just know it was much easier to get what I wanted out of the ExoCortex DSP library. I'm not a mathematician or engineer though; to those guys it might make perfect sense.
So! I use the FFT code yanked from ExoCortex, which Math.Net is based on, without anything else and it works great.
And finally, I know it's not C#, but I've started looking at using FFTW (http://www.fftw.org/). And this guy already made a C# wrapper so I was going to check it out but haven't actually used it yet. (http://www.sdss.jhu.edu/~tamas/bytes/fftwcsharp.html)
OH! I don't know if you are doing this for school or work but either way there is a GREAT free lecture series given by a Stanford professor on iTunes University.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fourier-transforms-and-its-applications/id384232849
AForge.net is a free (open-source) library with Fast Fourier Transform support. (See Sources/Imaging/ComplexImage.cs for usage, Sources/Math/FourierTransform.cs for implemenation)
Math.NET's Iridium library provides a fast, regularly updated collection of math-related functions, including the FFT. It's licensed under the LGPL so you are free to use it in commercial products.
I see this is an old thread, but for what it's worth, here's a free (MIT License) 1-D power-of-2-length-only C# FFT implementation I wrote in 2010.
I haven't compared its performance to other C# FFT implementations. I wrote it mainly to compare the performance of Flash/ActionScript and Silverlight/C#. The latter is much faster, at least for number crunching.
/**
* Performs an in-place complex FFT.
*
* Released under the MIT License
*
* Copyright (c) 2010 Gerald T. Beauregard
*
* Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
* of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to
* deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the
* rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or
* sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
* furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
*
* The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
* all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
*
* THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
* IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
* FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
* AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
* LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
* FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS
* IN THE SOFTWARE.
*/
public class FFT2
{
// Element for linked list in which we store the
// input/output data. We use a linked list because
// for sequential access it's faster than array index.
class FFTElement
{
public double re = 0.0; // Real component
public double im = 0.0; // Imaginary component
public FFTElement next; // Next element in linked list
public uint revTgt; // Target position post bit-reversal
}
private uint m_logN = 0; // log2 of FFT size
private uint m_N = 0; // FFT size
private FFTElement[] m_X; // Vector of linked list elements
/**
*
*/
public FFT2()
{
}
/**
* Initialize class to perform FFT of specified size.
*
* #param logN Log2 of FFT length. e.g. for 512 pt FFT, logN = 9.
*/
public void init(
uint logN )
{
m_logN = logN;
m_N = (uint)(1 << (int)m_logN);
// Allocate elements for linked list of complex numbers.
m_X = new FFTElement[m_N];
for (uint k = 0; k < m_N; k++)
m_X[k] = new FFTElement();
// Set up "next" pointers.
for (uint k = 0; k < m_N-1; k++)
m_X[k].next = m_X[k+1];
// Specify target for bit reversal re-ordering.
for (uint k = 0; k < m_N; k++ )
m_X[k].revTgt = BitReverse(k,logN);
}
/**
* Performs in-place complex FFT.
*
* #param xRe Real part of input/output
* #param xIm Imaginary part of input/output
* #param inverse If true, do an inverse FFT
*/
public void run(
double[] xRe,
double[] xIm,
bool inverse = false )
{
uint numFlies = m_N >> 1; // Number of butterflies per sub-FFT
uint span = m_N >> 1; // Width of the butterfly
uint spacing = m_N; // Distance between start of sub-FFTs
uint wIndexStep = 1; // Increment for twiddle table index
// Copy data into linked complex number objects
// If it's an IFFT, we divide by N while we're at it
FFTElement x = m_X[0];
uint k = 0;
double scale = inverse ? 1.0/m_N : 1.0;
while (x != null)
{
x.re = scale*xRe[k];
x.im = scale*xIm[k];
x = x.next;
k++;
}
// For each stage of the FFT
for (uint stage = 0; stage < m_logN; stage++)
{
// Compute a multiplier factor for the "twiddle factors".
// The twiddle factors are complex unit vectors spaced at
// regular angular intervals. The angle by which the twiddle
// factor advances depends on the FFT stage. In many FFT
// implementations the twiddle factors are cached, but because
// array lookup is relatively slow in C#, it's just
// as fast to compute them on the fly.
double wAngleInc = wIndexStep * 2.0*Math.PI/m_N;
if (inverse == false)
wAngleInc *= -1;
double wMulRe = Math.Cos(wAngleInc);
double wMulIm = Math.Sin(wAngleInc);
for (uint start = 0; start < m_N; start += spacing)
{
FFTElement xTop = m_X[start];
FFTElement xBot = m_X[start+span];
double wRe = 1.0;
double wIm = 0.0;
// For each butterfly in this stage
for (uint flyCount = 0; flyCount < numFlies; ++flyCount)
{
// Get the top & bottom values
double xTopRe = xTop.re;
double xTopIm = xTop.im;
double xBotRe = xBot.re;
double xBotIm = xBot.im;
// Top branch of butterfly has addition
xTop.re = xTopRe + xBotRe;
xTop.im = xTopIm + xBotIm;
// Bottom branch of butterly has subtraction,
// followed by multiplication by twiddle factor
xBotRe = xTopRe - xBotRe;
xBotIm = xTopIm - xBotIm;
xBot.re = xBotRe*wRe - xBotIm*wIm;
xBot.im = xBotRe*wIm + xBotIm*wRe;
// Advance butterfly to next top & bottom positions
xTop = xTop.next;
xBot = xBot.next;
// Update the twiddle factor, via complex multiply
// by unit vector with the appropriate angle
// (wRe + j wIm) = (wRe + j wIm) x (wMulRe + j wMulIm)
double tRe = wRe;
wRe = wRe*wMulRe - wIm*wMulIm;
wIm = tRe*wMulIm + wIm*wMulRe;
}
}
numFlies >>= 1; // Divide by 2 by right shift
span >>= 1;
spacing >>= 1;
wIndexStep <<= 1; // Multiply by 2 by left shift
}
// The algorithm leaves the result in a scrambled order.
// Unscramble while copying values from the complex
// linked list elements back to the input/output vectors.
x = m_X[0];
while (x != null)
{
uint target = x.revTgt;
xRe[target] = x.re;
xIm[target] = x.im;
x = x.next;
}
}
/**
* Do bit reversal of specified number of places of an int
* For example, 1101 bit-reversed is 1011
*
* #param x Number to be bit-reverse.
* #param numBits Number of bits in the number.
*/
private uint BitReverse(
uint x,
uint numBits)
{
uint y = 0;
for (uint i = 0; i < numBits; i++)
{
y <<= 1;
y |= x & 0x0001;
x >>= 1;
}
return y;
}
}
An old question but it still shows up in Google results...
A very un-restrictive MIT Licensed C# / .NET library can be found at,
https://www.codeproject.com/articles/1107480/dsplib-fft-dft-fourier-transform-library-for-net
This library is fast as it parallel threads on multiple cores and is very complete and ready to use.
Here's another; a C# port of the Ooura FFT. It's reasonably fast. The package also includes overlap/add convolution and some other DSP stuff, under the MIT license.
https://github.com/hughpyle/inguz-DSPUtil/blob/master/Fourier.cs
http://www.exocortex.org/dsp/ is an open-source C# mathematics library with FFT algorithms.
The Numerical Recipes website (http://www.nr.com/) has an FFT if you don't mind typing it in. I am working on a project converting a Labview program to C# 2008, .NET 3.5 to acquire data and then look at the frequency spectrum. Unfortunately the Math.Net uses the latest .NET framework, so I couldn't use that FFT. I tried the Exocortex one - it worked but the results to match the Labview results and I don't know enough FFT theory to know what is causing the problem. So I tried the FFT on the numerical recipes website and it worked! I was also able to program the Labview low sidelobe window (and had to introduce a scaling factor).
You can read the chapter of the Numerical Recipes book as a guest on thier site, but the book is so useful that I highly recomend purchasing it. Even if you do end up using the Math.NET FFT.
For a multi-threaded implementation tuned for Intel processors I'd check out Intel's MKL library. It's not free, but it's afforable (less than $100) and blazing fast - but you'd need to call it's C dll's via P/Invokes. The Exocortex project stopped development 6 years ago, so I'd be careful using it if this is an important project.

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