Examples Measuring Amplitude (Visualization)

Measuring Amplitude (Visualization)

Analyze the amplitude of sound with p5.Amplitude.

Amplitude is the magnitude of vibration and is closely related to volume or loudness.

The getLevel() method takes an array of amplitude values collected over a small period of time (1024 samples) and returns the Root Mean Square (RMS) of these values.

Amplitude values for digital audio are typically between -1.0 and 1.0, however RMS will always be positive because it is ‘amplitude squared.’ Rrather than use instantanous amplitude readings that are sampled at a rate of 44,100 times per second, the RMS is an average over time (1024 samples, in this case), which better represents how we hear amplitude.

You might also experiment with analyzing a sound after a lowpass filter to make more complex visualizations.