Ahhh resynthesis, one of my favourite toys! You forgot the partials' amplitude envelopes, and that's the bit you really want to know ;) That's why most wave editors do 3D FFT... Consider a textual representation of an envelope with some dozens of breakpoints, and maybe it won't be so 'digestible' any more... Guess it depends on whether you're digesting/parsing it by eye or by software or what... What's the plan exactly? Anyway to answer your question, 5 minutes in google got me these hints: max and pd and processing and matlab and octave do it... audacity does it... http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/printview.php?t=210852&start=0 I'm sure a few more minutes will get you something really useful :)