tone-generator

Generates a short tone with clean raised-cosine on/off ramps and saves it as WAV or MP3.

Features

• Sine, square, triangle (band-limited, alias-free), or noise waveform
• Multi-tone / harmonic complex (sum several carriers)
• Sinusoidal amplitude modulation (SAM)
• Hann (raised-cosine) onset/offset ramps, independently settable
• Level in dBFS, targeted as peak or RMS
• Mono or stereo, optional second sync/trigger channel
• Leading/trailing silence padding
• WAV (16/24-bit) always available; MP3 export via pydub
• 10 s calibration tone at the same frequency/level
• Optional JSON file with parameters/timing
• Optional envelope + spectrum plot

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• numpy
• pydub + ffmpeg (only needed for --format mp3)
• matplotlib (only needed for --plot)

Install

pip install numpy
python3 tone_generator.py

Usage

# Default tone: 750 Hz, 75 ms, 10 ms ramps, -12 dBFS
python3 tone_generator.py

# Custom frequency and duration
python3 tone_generator.py --freq 1200 --duration 100

# Square wave, loudness-matched to a sine via RMS
python3 tone_generator.py --waveform square --level-mode rms --amplitude -18

# Multi-tone / harmonic complex (sum of carriers)
python3 tone_generator.py --freq 440 554 659

# 40 Hz amplitude modulation (SAM)
python3 tone_generator.py --freq 750 --am-freq 40 --am-depth 0.8

# MP3 output
python3 tone_generator.py --format mp3

Run python3 tone_generator.py --help for the full option list.

Output

Each run writes an audio file. The auto-generated filename encodes frequency, duration, and ramp (e.g. tone_750hz_75ms_10msramp.wav); use --out to name it yourself, and --force to overwrite an existing file. Pass --metadata to also write a <file>.json recording every parameter used.

--calibration-tone additionally writes a <file>_calib.wav with a 10 s steady tone at the same frequency/level/waveform, for metering playback level.

License

MIT