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I've been shown this website which is a pretty good interactive guide to audio waveforms; from basic sine waves, frequency and amplitude to more complex waveforms and harmonics. Nothing too technical, but if physics was never a strong subject at school, then this is a good basic grounding. Best used with speakers or headphones as you'll want to hear the noises.
http://waveforms.surge.sh/waveforms-intro
Very cool SB thanks
Good link simon
Cheers for posting that Simon, even I had an easy time understanding all the concepts, I've bookmarked it for future reference.
Thought that I would post a link to this website because it's a good article about how Harmonic Distortion works:
http://blackstoneappliances.com/dist101.html
Those first two interactive diagrams leave something to be desired. The harmonics are shown out of phase with the fundamental, which won't be the case for real harmonics of a note. If you are going to demonstrate something, get it right!
To better illustrate the point, I'd suggest showing the fundamental and the harmonic waveform, as well as the resultant waveform. It makes it easier to see how the resulting wave is formed. Also showing the effect of the amplitude of the harmonics on the resulting waveform would also have been useful before moving on to more complicated items.
Not impressed with that site at all.
They used to have a better javascript interactive app on that website where you could tweak the amplitude and phase of the fundamental plus 7 harmonics (if my memory serves me right), you could hear as well as see the results you got from trying different combinations of settings, a bit of a pity that they no longer have it.