http://www.klingbeil.com/spear/

Steps to create a sinusoidal analysis file with SPEAR:

1. File -> Open, then choose sound file from disk. Leave 'Sinusoidal Partial Analysis' at the defaults. You have the option to choose a particular channel or mix all channels down for the analysis. This really depends on your audio file, so look at / listen to the source carefully to see if there is a particular dominance in one channel over the other. If not, then use the default of 'mix all channels'.

2. Click 'Analyze'

3. Spear creates the analysis and posts it to a window where you can preview.

4. Click on the play icon to preview

5. Choose an export format. For use with Max, many typically prefer using either SDIF 1TRC Exact Interpolated, or SDIF 1TRC Resampled frames. The difference between these two is that with Exact Interpolated, the spectrum is interpolated evenly throughout each frame, and in Resampled Frames, the spectrum is analyzed further for activity and gets resampled one or more times based on that layer of analysis.

6. Click on 'File' -> 'Export as...', and name your file, then choose a location.

You're done. You can import this file into Max at this point, using a plethora of patches that are located in the [http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/library/max_msp_jitter_depot|MMJ Depot].

[http://www.klingbeil.com/spear/analysis.html|Here] is a page that covers some key commands, common troubleshooting tips, and tricks for specific types of sounds.

Some notes:

* SPEAR writes 1TRC frames in stream 0. By default, Spear tries to collect many, many partials (1 for every 40hz). This helps make the frequency resolution (and consequential analysis) rich, but it might also amount to a larger file and potentially bog down your CPU when you try to use it with a tool like sinusoids~ in Max. There are a number of solutions to this:

-- Edit the Frequency resolution so that it is more coarse (i.e., larger than 40hz increments)

-- Use the selection method found under 'Edit' -> 'Select Partials Below Threshold...' to select and delete partials below -60 dB.

* The SDIF 1TRC Resampled Frames format might be slightly better sounding, depending on the material.

* SPEAR will edit and export RBEP frames. However, it doesn't do bandwidth enhancement analysis. Only use this if you did your analysis with Loris, for example.