Real-Time Piano Note Frequency Detection Using FPGA and FFT Core

TL;DR

This paper presents a real-time FPGA-based system for detecting piano note frequencies using FFT, enabling low-latency and deterministic frequency analysis suitable for musical applications.

Contribution

It introduces a hardware implementation of FFT on FPGA for real-time piano frequency detection, improving speed and reducing latency over software methods.

Findings

Achieved real-time frequency detection with low latency

Demonstrated FPGA's suitability for musical signal processing

Improved determinism in frequency analysis

Abstract

Real-time frequency analysis of musical instruments, such as the piano, is an essential feature in areas like electronic tuners, music visualizers, and live sound monitoring. Traditional methods often rely on software-based digital signal processing (DSP), which may introduce latency and require significant computational power. In contrast, hardware platforms such as FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) offer the ability to perform such analyses with greater speed and determinism due to their parallel processing capabilities. The primary objective of this project was to analyze analog audio signals from a digital piano using an FPGA-based real-time Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) system.