[PD] Analyzing subharmonic frequencies accurately

[Samuel Burt]

A friend of mine asked me if I could make some kind of filter that could provide information about subharmonic frequencies. I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but I thought I'd try a few things to see what I could get.

He mentioned he wanted the following bands 1-3 Hz, 4-6 Hz, 7-9 Hz, 11-14 Hz, and 15-18 Hz.

The first thing I tried was a series of [lop~] and [hip~] filters in the ranges he was wanting. I stacked multiple [lop~]s and [hip~]s, to make really hard limits and then sent the output from each band to vu~ meters. This was unreliable. In fact, a 5 Hz sine wave seemed more likely to show up in the 10 Hz band. I also tried [bp~], [vcf~], and [svf~] with no luck.

I then took a different approach, using [threshhold~] and [timer] to time the distance between zero crossings and output the result. This is very reliable for a sine wave, but I fear it wouldn't be that useful for real world signals.

Have any of you ever tried to separate out subharmonic frequencies in Pd? Any experience with brain wave analysis in software? What's a better technique?

Thanks,

Sam in Baltimore