wave generator program?

[freak scene]

aside from building one or buying one, is there a way around having to own a wave generator (until i can afford one at least)?  maybe a program that can produce sine waves through a computers sound card? 

[davebungo]

Cheapest option would be a freeware wave editor which can generate sine waves and output the result to a wav file which you could then play via Windows Media player etc.
A few are priced but usually have a trial period.  I think Goldwave is one I seem to remember.

[freak scene]

thanks.

[Joe Kramer]

Hi!

You might be able to find an old version of CoolEditPro for free out there (V1.1?).  CEP will generate sine, square, triangle, white and pink noise, etc.  Easy to use.  I've also heard good things about Audacity, a free audio editor/recorder. 

Joe

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Once you get a wav generator going, think  about making a CD of test tones. Then you can use your CD player as a signal generator, very convenient.. plus you can put a few guitar licks on it, pretty handy to have a repeatable riff when you are tweaking up envelope followers for example.

[freak scene]

Once you get a wav generator going, think  about making a CD of test tones. Then you can use your CD player as a signal generator, very convenient.. plus you can put a few guitar licks on it, pretty handy to have a repeatable riff when you are tweaking up envelope followers for example.

that is a great idea. 

man im glad i found this site   

[Transmogrifox]

I'll add another thumbs up for Audacity.  I have not been very impressed with it as an editor for high-quality mixing (but who's to complain, it's free), but it does export projects as .wav files.  You can generate sinewaves---can't remember if it does other types, but what's cool is that you can manipulate the waveform samples with the mouse so you can draw whatever waveform you want to use for a test signal, copy and paste for about a 1 second (or longer) interval then export as .wav.  Put your media player on track repeat and you have a test signal off your PC. 

I really like the CD player idea, Paul.  This could be pretty useful--especially now that I'm near time to start debugging my envelope filter to find out where envelope follower rectified output is bleeding into the signal path.