Sine Wave Sound Generator in Java

milo picture milo · Dec 26, 2011 · Viewed 39.1k times · Source

What's the simplest way to generate a sine wave sound at any frequency in Java? A sample size more than 2 bytes would help, but it doesn't really matter.

Answer

Andrew Thompson picture Andrew Thompson · Dec 26, 2011

See Beeper for a self-contained example.


Perhaps something simpler?

That 51 lines of snippet (repeated below - spaced out for single line & in-line comments) as shown at the top of the linked answer, is about as simple as generating a tone gets (OK, you can take out 5+ lines for the harmonic).

People seem to assume it should be a method built into the toolkit to produce a pure tone. It is not, and takes a little calculating to make one.

/** Generates a tone, and assigns it to the Clip. */
public void generateTone()
    throws LineUnavailableException {
    if ( clip!=null ) {
        clip.stop();
        clip.close();
    } else {
        clip = AudioSystem.getClip();
    }
    boolean addHarmonic = harmonic.isSelected();

    int intSR = ((Integer)sampleRate.getSelectedItem()).intValue();
    int intFPW = framesPerWavelength.getValue();

    float sampleRate = (float)intSR;

    // oddly, the sound does not loop well for less than
    // around 5 or so, wavelengths
    int wavelengths = 20;
    byte[] buf = new byte[2*intFPW*wavelengths];
    AudioFormat af = new AudioFormat(
        sampleRate,
        8,  // sample size in bits
        2,  // channels
        true,  // signed
        false  // bigendian
        );

    int maxVol = 127;
    for(int i=0; i<intFPW*wavelengths; i++){
        double angle = ((float)(i*2)/((float)intFPW))*(Math.PI);
        buf[i*2]=getByteValue(angle);
        if(addHarmonic) {
            buf[(i*2)+1]=getByteValue(2*angle);
        } else {
            buf[(i*2)+1] = buf[i*2];
        }
    }

    try {
        byte[] b = buf;
        AudioInputStream ais = new AudioInputStream(
            new ByteArrayInputStream(b),
            af,
            buf.length/2 );

        clip.open( ais );
    } catch(Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}