Neutron Forum

First, let me say Neutron is my favorite player on iOS bar none. I LOVE LOVE LOVE your app for so many reasons!

I did have a question about the spectrum analyzer. It seems like the scale is skewed in an unexpected way higher on the left side bass frequencies. My songs don't render in the analyzer at all like they do in other players I use. The bass ALWAYS seems to show up with super maxed out bars and the treble frequencies tend to always be lower in the graph more than I would expect for the music playing.

Has anyone else noticed this? Or is it just me?

And thanks again for the killer app, I couldn't live without it!

Here's an example of what I'm seeing... (Update: I removed these attachments in favor of the pink noise example I added in a new post below.)

Both images are from approximately the same place of the chorus in the Van Halen tune Mean Streets. One is a screen cap from Neutron on iOS, and the other is a photo of a WinAMP plugin on my PC (but other programs show the same thing).

Please note I don't mean to suggest these two images are from the exact same point in the track's timecode, but more broadly speaking, the spectrum analyzer pegs out (0 db full scale) on the screen way more often than the trebles, and does so in a way not consistent with what I'm hearing in my ears.

Another example this morning was when I was playing the Beatles album Rubber Soul, and the base was also maxed out like this through parts that didn't sound like the chart looked like. But the more important observation is that it seems like there is some sort of bias that is relatively lowering the high frequencies and heightening the low frequencies in the chart itself (not the music, the music/audio coming out sounds GREAT).

Anyway, don't mean to make a fuss, but thought I'd mention in case I'm missing something, or if it were an easy fix, that would be awesome.

Like I said above, I couldn't live without your app for my phone... Thanks!

Indeed Neutron's spectral analyser behaves like this. Although it could be improved heavily by a few small changes, the developer- who is aware of it - most probably did not find the time or has put it low on his priority list.

That's somewhat unfortunate given how blatantly inaccurate it is. You can't actually use it as a "spectrum analyzer" at all. Makes me want to run a flac of white noise through it to see how messed up it looks.

That all said, I can appreciate there may be other development priorities, and the player is still one of the best on iOS in my opinion.

Update: attached is pink noise run through the Neutron spectrum analyzer. It should look flat across the spectrum, but it's got some sort of even slope through it instead. Using pink noise ought to help debug this down the road.

And here's the linear output of the pink noise, again should be perfectly flat.