• Composite shows a combination of absolute pitch, amplitude, relative pitch (intonation), and quality. The height of the trace shows the pitch, the thickness shows the RMS amplitude, and the color shows the relative sharpness or flatness: red for sharp and blue for flat. The bluer the trace, the flatter the note. Quality is shown in the brightness of the trace: notes below a threshold quality are shown dimmer than high-quality notes.
• Amplitude shows the loudness envelope only. This is similar to the display you would see with audio processing applications such as Audacity. The height of the trace above and below zero is equal to the peak maximum and minimum signal amplitude. If you zoom the time scale very close, you can see the individual samples making up the waveform.
• RMS Amplitude is similar to Amplitude, but instead of being based on the peak amplitude of the signal, it calculates the average amplitude on a root-mean-square basis. This kind of display is more indicative of the perceived loudness of the signal.
• Pitch show pitch only. Readout is numeric using MIDI note numbers, where middle C = 60. A value of 65.02 is 2 cents sharper than an equal-tempered F above middle C.
• Quality shows quality level only. Quality is a measure of confidence: an indication of how strong the evidence is that there really is a note being played at that pitch. It has nothing to do with subjective evaluation of the tonal quality.
• Spectrum shows the frequency spectrum, or the Fast Fourier Transform, of the sound. If recording or playback is happening, the FFT shows the spectrum of the live sound. Otherwise, it shows the spectrum of the sound at the point of the needle visible in other display modes. Note that when Intonia is set to record, the display shows the spectrum of the sound being picked up by the microphone, even when the pause button is depressed.

When the view mode is Pitch or Composite, a piano keyboard is displayed on the left edge of the screen, with a green dot at A-440.

The View Type may also be selected on the View Tab of the Options dialog.

Show Deviations

• Pitch is the arithmetic average: it indicates whether the selection tends to be flat or sharp, and by how much, where a half step is equal to 1.000. A change in the A Frequency from 440 to 441 corresponds to a pitch change of approximately 0.040.
• Deviation is the RMS average: it estimates the accuracy treating high and low as the same. The calculation gives more weight to the notes that are farther off pitch.