For fast navigation and replaying the signal, SIGVIEW provides various functions for playing the signal with or without audio output. All functions are accessible from the “Play & navigate” menu item or in the toolbar:


graphic  Rewind: Moves to the beginning of the signal.


graphic  Play (no sound): Moves through the signal the same as when you press and hold the right arrow key. All child windows are recalculated and repainted on each step. There is no sound being played. The step for moving through the signal will be the current step for that signal. SIGVIEW will adjust the replay speed to the sampling rate of the signal, i.e. replaying will be performed in real-time. If you would like to process signal as fast as possible, select the Play signals as fast as possible instead of simulating real-time speed option from the Application settings dialog or the corresponding toolbar button (graphic). This option works globally, i.e. will be applied to all signals after you change it in the main menu.


graphic Play with sound: Plays signal on your default sound card and moves through the signal at the same time. For example, if you zoom in to a block of 4096 samples length in the signal and use this function, SIGVIEW will play the visible part of the signal, move 4096 samples further, play the next block etc. until the end of the signal. It is very useful for audio signals because you can observe the analysis and hear the sound at the same time.


If you try to play the signal and there is no sound, maybe the signal amplitude is simply not high enough. SIGVIEW expects signal amplitude values in a 16-bit range, i.e. -32767…32767. If you would like SIGVIEW to automatically adjust signal volume before playing, you can turn on the Adjust volume automatically option in the Application settings dialog.


If you would like SIGVIEW to start playing a signal from the beginning when one of playback options reaches the end of the signal, please turn on the Audio playback in loop option in the Application settings dialog or the corresponding toolbar button (graphic).


graphic  Play visible segment only: Similar to the previous function, except that SIGVIEW will only play the visible part of the signal and then stop playing.



Play signal (with sound) from cursor position: This audio playback function considers the current cursor position and current selection inside the signal. Therefore, it will mainly be used interactively by pressing a corresponding keyboard shortcut (F6). 

    • If a part of the signal has been selected , this function will play only a selected part of the signal. If the loop option is on (graphic), the selection will be played in loop
    • If there is no selection, this function will start playing from the current cursor position
    • If this function is started while playback is already active, it will restart the playback based on the current cursor position or selection. That makes it suitable for fast inspection of the signal while moving cursor or selecting signal parts and playing those interactively.



graphic  Fast forward: Moves to the end of the signal.


graphic  Stop: Stops any of the running Play functions.



Audio cursor


During audio playback, an audio cursor will be displayed on the current audio playing position. It is similar as a current mouse position cursor, but a bit wider. Only in the case that the signal has been zoomed-in in a very small part and is scrolling fast during playback, the audio cursor may not be visible.


At the same time, audio cursor will be displayed in all synchronised windows . For example, in the below example, audio cursor is displayed in the signal and in its spectrogram and Time-FFT windows:



This cursor synchronisation option can be turned off in Application Settings Dialog.

Keyboard shortcuts


Most playback functions can be used by using keyboard shortcuts. See this chapter for detail.