Given an array of data, extract possible frequencies with fft, how to? - matlab

I am fairly new to vibrations and using matalb fft.I am given a set of data (1D array) of length 15000 (not sure if this is relevant) and I am trying to figure out if there is any wave buried in this data at all. I was instructed to possibly use matlab fft. Is that the correct way to do it? what shall I expect to see? I am really not sure how to interpret any results I would get.
Please let me know what you all think.
Thanks and if more details are needed I will provide them.
Example:
% Df=[array is given to me and it is of size 15000];
% t=[time used for the above array, and if it is of the same size, also provided to me]
N_0= length(t);
fs_0=length(Dfxz);
Y_0=fft(Dfxz,N_0);
k_0=-N_0/2:N_0/2-1;
%Find the phase angle
p_0 = (angle(Y_0));
R_0 = norm(Y_0);
ff_0 = (0:length(Y_0)-1)'/length(Y_0)*100; % Frequency vector
FT_power1_0 = abs(Y_0);
plot(k_0*fs_0/N_0,fftshift(abs(Y_0)))
I only see 1 peek at frequency = 0 but I am sure that there are non zero frequencies, what am I doing wrong?
Thanks!
PS:I am not sure how to pick the sampling frequency either? any tips please (keep in mind that I do not know the original frequency)

Try my version. It looks to me like you have all the information you need to find frequency peaks in your data if they exist. If all you can see is a big peak at zero frequency, you probably have a massive DC offset that is drowning out all your other data. I have put a remedy in my code . .
x = randn(15000,1); %//This is the data you were given - I'll use noise for demonstration - replace x with your Df data
%//If youre getting a massive peak at zero that dwarfs everything else, you
%//probably have a large DC offset. Easily removed in the time domain using
%//the following ..
x = x-mean(x);
tAxis = linspace(3/15000,3,15000); %//You said you have this too - I'll make up something for demonstration - make sure you replace this with your t data
dt = diff(tAxis(1:2)); %//sample period from time axis
fs = 1/dt;%//sample rate from sample period
NFFT = numel(x); %//number of fft bins - change if you like
Y = abs(fft(x, NFFT)).^2; %power spectrum
%//Calculate frequency axis
df = fs/NFFT;
fAxis = 0:df:(fs-df);
%//Plot it all
figure; plot(fAxis(1:NFFT/2), Y(1:NFFT/2))
xlabel('Frequency in Hz')
ylabel('Power')
If that works out OK, you can go into more depth by checking out another FFT answer on stackoverflow.

Related

Store maximum frequency

I am working on a script which performs a FFT of given short audio file in a loop. I also want to store the peak frequency but I do not know how to do that.
The code looks similar to this:
n = ...
Frequencies = zeros(1,n); % Allocating memory for the peak frequencies
for k = 1:n
str(k)
textFileName = [num2str(k) '.m4a'];
[data,fs] = audioread(textFileName);
%...
% Fast Fourier transform and plotting part works ok
%...
[peaks,frequencies] = findpeaks(abs(cutP2),cutf,'MinPeakHeight',10e-3);
% Here starts the problem
maximum_Peak = max(peaks);
Frequencies(k) = ... % I need to store the frequency which is coupled
% with the maximum amplitude but I do not know how
end
close(figure(n)) %The loop opens one redundant blank plot, I could not
%find out any other way to close it
I do not want to store the amplitudes of peak frequencies, but frequencies of peak amplitudes. If you could help me with the redundant figure, I would be happy. I tried to implement an if statement but did not work.
max contains a second output which returns the index of the maximum value. Use this second value to stores the value of interest.
[maximum_Peak,I] = max(peaks); %Note I Use 'I' for index - personal habit
Frequencies(k) = frequencies(I);
Also, if your goal is only to find the max point findpeaks may be overkill and you could potentially use:
[maximum_Peak,I] = max(abs(cutP2));
%Might want to check that max is high enough
Frequencies(k) = cutf(I);
Note although the code is similar it is not the same and depends on what you want to do.
Finally, some unsolicited advice, your use of frequencies and Frequencies is a bit of a red flag. Generally differences based on capitalization are not a good idea. Consider renaming the latter to freq_of_max_amp

FFT: How to find the single sided spectrum when there are less than fs/2 samples

I am writing a piece of code that figures out what frequencies(notes) are being played at any given time of a song (note currently I am testing it grabbing only the first second of the song). To do this I break the first second of the audio file into 8 different chunks. Then I perform an FFT on each chunk and plot it with the following code:
% Taking a second of an audio file and breaking it into n many chunks and
% figuring out what frequencies make up each of those chunks
clear all;
% Read Audio
fs = 44100; % sample frequency (Hz)
full = audioread('song.wav');
% Perform fft and get frequencies
chunks = 8; % How many chunks to break wave into
for i = 1:chunks
beginningChunk = (i-1)*fs/chunks+1
endChunk = i*fs/chunks
x = full(beginningChunk:endChunk);
y = fft(x);
n = length(x); % number of samples in chunk
amp = abs(y)/n; % amplitude of the DFT
%%%amp = amp(1:fs/2/chunks); % note this is my attempt that I think is wrong
f = (0:n-1)*(fs/n); % frequency range
%%%f = f(1:fs/2/chunks); % note this is my attempt that I think is wrong
figure(i);
plot(f,amp)
xlabel('Frequency')
ylabel('amplitude')
end
When I do that I get graphs that look like these:
It looks like I am plotting too many points because the frequencies go up in magnitude at the far right of graphs so I think I am using the double sided spectrum. I think I need to only use the samples from 1:fs/2, the problem is I don't have a big enough matrix to grab that many points. I tried going from 1:fs/2/chunks, but I am unconvinced those are the right values so I commented those out. How can I find the single sided spectrum when there are less than fs/2 samples?
As a side note when I plot all the graphs I notice the frequencies given are almost exactly the same. This is surprising to me because I thought I made the chunks small enough that only the frequency that's happening at the exact time should be grabbed -- and therefore I would be getting the current note being played. If anyone knows how I can single out what note is being played at each time better that information would be greatly appreciated.
For a single-sided FT simply take the first half of the output of the FFT algorithm. The other half (the nagative frequencies) is redundant given that your input is real-valued.
1/8 second is quite long. Note that relevant frequencies are around 160-1600 Hz, if I remeber correctly (music is not my specialty). Those will be in the left-most region of your FT. The highest frequency you compute (after dropping the right half of FFT) is half your sampling frequency, 44.1/2 kHz. The lowest frequency, and the distance between samples, is given by the length of your transform (44.1 kHz / number of samples).

getting the delay/lag of Ultrasonic pulse velocity matlab

I am currently doing a thesis that needs Ultrasonic pulse velocity(UPV). UPV can easily be attained via the machines but the data we acquired didn't have UPV so we are tasked to get it manually.
Essentially in the data we have 2 channels, one for the transmitter transducer and another for a receiver transducer.
We need to get the time from wave from the transmitter is emitted and the time it arrives to the receiver.
Using matlab, I've tried finddelay and xcorr but doesnt quite get the right result.
Here is a picture of the points I would want to get. The plot is of the transmitter(blue) and receiver(red)
So I am trying to find the two points in the picture but with the aid of matlab. The two would determine the time and further the UPV.
I am relatively a new MATLAB user so your help would be of great assistance.
Here is the code I have tried
[cc, lags] = xcorr(signal1,signal2);
d2 = -(lags(cc == max(cc))) / Fs;
#xenoclast hi there! so far the code i used are these.
close all
clc
Fs = input('input Fs = ');
T = 1/Fs;
L = input('input L = ');
t = (0:L-1)*T;
time = transpose(t);
i = input('input number of steploads = ');
% construct test sequences
%dataupv is the signal1 & datathesis is the signal2
for m=1:i
y1 = (dataupv(:,m) - mean(dataupv(:,m))) / std(dataupv(:,m));
y2 = (datathesis(:,m) - mean(datathesis(:,m))) / std(datathesis(:,m));
offset = 166;
tt = time;
% correlate the two sequences
[cc, lags] = xcorr(y2, y1,);
% find the in4dex of the maximum
[maxval, maxI] = max(cc);
[minval, minI] = min(cc);
% use that index to obtain the lag in samples
lagsamples(m,1) = lags(maxI);
lagsamples2(m,1) = lags(minI);
% plot again without timebase to verify visually
end
the resulting value is off by 70 samples compared to when i visually inspect the waves. the lag resulted in 244 but visually it should be 176 here are the data(there are 19 sets of data but i only used the 1st column) https://www.dropbox.com/s/ng5uq8f7oyap0tq/datatrans-dec-2014.xlsx?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/1x7en0x7elnbg42/datarec-dec-2014.xlsx?dl=0
Your example code doesn't specify Fs so I don't know for sure but I'm guessing that it's an issue of sample rate(s). All the examples of cross correlation start out by constructing test sequences according to a specific sample rate that they usually call Fs, not to be confused with the frequency of the test tone, which you may see called Fc.
If you construct the test signals in terms of Fs and Fc then this works fine but when you get real data from an instrument they often give you the data and the timebase as two vectors, so you have to work out the sample rate from the timebase. This may not be the same as the operating frequency or the components of the signal, so confusion is easy here.
But the sample rate is only required in the second part of the problem, where you work out the offset in time. First you have to get the offset in samples and that's a lot easier to verify.
Your example will give you the offset in samples if you remove the '/ Fs' term and you can verify it by plotting the two signals without a timebase and inspecting the sample positions.
I'm sure you've looked at dozens of examples but here's one that attempts to not confuse the issue by tying it to sample rates - you'll note that nowhere is it specified what the 'sample rate' is, it's just tied to samples (although if you treat the 5 in the y1 definition as a frequency in Hz then you will be able to infer one).
% construct test sequences
offset = 23;
tt = 0:0.01:1;
y1 = sin(2*pi*5*tt);
y2 = 0.8 * [zeros(1, offset) y1];
figure(1); clf; hold on
plot(tt, y1)
plot(tt, y2(1:numel(tt)), 'r')
% correlate the two sequences
[cc, lags] = xcorr(y2, y1);
figure(2); clf;
plot(cc)
% find the index of the maximum
[maxval, maxI] = max(cc);
% use that index to obtain the lag in samples
lagsamples = lags(maxI);
% plot again without timebase to verify visually
figure(3); clf; hold on
plot(y1)
plot(y2, 'r')
plot([offset offset], [-1 1], 'k:')
Once you've got the offset in samples you can probably deduce the required conversion factor, but if you have timebase data from the instrument then the inverse of the diff of any two consecutive entries will give it you.
UPDATE
When you correlate the two signals you can visualise it as overlaying them and summing the product of corresponding elements. This gives you a single value. Then you move one signal by a sample and do it again. Continue until you have done it at every possible arrangement of the two signals.
The value obtained at each step is the correlation, but the 'lag' is computed starting with one signal all the way over to the left and the other overlapping by only one sample. You slide the second signal all the way over until it's only overlapping the other end by a sample. Hence the number of values returned by the correlation is related to the length of both the original signals, and relating any given point in the correlation output, such as the max value, to the arrangement of the two signals that produced it requires you to do a calculation involving those lengths. The xcorr function makes this easier by outputting the lags variable, which tracks the alignment of the two signals. People may also talk about this as an offset so watch out for that.

the Length of signal in calculating FFT

I want to ask some questions related to the last question of mine so I don't want to post in another thread. My question contains a code, I therefore can't post it as a comment. So I have to edit my old question into a new one. Please take a look and help. Thank you.
I'm new to FFT and DSP and I want to ask you some questions about calculating FFT in Matlab. The following code is from Matlab help, I just removed the noise.
Can I choose the length of signal L different from NFFT?
I'm not sure if I used window correctly. But when I use window (hanning in the following code), I can't get the exact values of amplitudes?
When L and NFFT get different values, then the values of amplitudes were different too. How can I get the exact value of amplitude of input signal? (in the following code, I used a already known signal to check if the code work correctly. But in case, I got the signal from a sensor and I dont know ahead its amplitude, how can I check?)
I thank you very much and look forward to hearing from you :)
Fs = 1000; % Sampling frequency
T = 1/Fs; % Sample time
L = 512; % Length of signal
NFFT=1024; % number of fft points
t = (0:L-1)*T; % Time vector
x = 0.7*sin(2*pi*50*t) + sin(2*pi*120*t); input signal
X = fft(hann(L).*x', NFFT)/L;
f = Fs/2*linspace(0,1,NFFT/2+1);
plot(f,2*abs(X(1:NFFT/2+1))) % Plot single-sided amplitude spectrum.
L is the number of samples in your input signal. If L < NFFT then the difference is zero-padded.
I would recommend you do some reading on the effect of zero-padding on FFTs. Typically it is best to use L = NFFT as this will give you the best representation of your data.
An excepted answer on the use of zero-padding and FFTs is given here:
https://dsp.stackexchange.com/questions/741/why-should-i-zero-pad-a-signal-before-taking-the-fourier-transform
In your experiment you are seeing different amplitudes because you will have different amount of spectral leakage with each different L.
You need to apply a window function prior to the FFT to get consistent results with frequency components that have non-integral number of periods within your sampling window.
You might also want to consider using periodogram instead of using the FFT directly - it takes care of window functions and a lot of the other housekeeping for you.

DSP - Filtering in the frequency domain via FFT

I've been playing around a little with the Exocortex implementation of the FFT, but I'm having some problems.
Whenever I modify the amplitudes of the frequency bins before calling the iFFT the resulting signal contains some clicks and pops, especially when low frequencies are present in the signal (like drums or basses). However, this does not happen if I attenuate all the bins by the same factor.
Let me put an example of the output buffer of a 4-sample FFT:
// Bin 0 (DC)
FFTOut[0] = 0.0000610351563
FFTOut[1] = 0.0
// Bin 1
FFTOut[2] = 0.000331878662
FFTOut[3] = 0.000629425049
// Bin 2
FFTOut[4] = -0.0000381469727
FFTOut[5] = 0.0
// Bin 3, this is the first and only negative frequency bin.
FFTOut[6] = 0.000331878662
FFTOut[7] = -0.000629425049
The output is composed of pairs of floats, each representing the real and imaginay parts of a single bin. So, bin 0 (array indexes 0, 1) would represent the real and imaginary parts of the DC frequency. As you can see, bins 1 and 3 both have the same values, (except for the sign of the Im part), so I guess bin 3 is the first negative frequency, and finally indexes (4, 5) would be the last positive frequency bin.
Then to attenuate the frequency bin 1 this is what I do:
// Attenuate the 'positive' bin
FFTOut[2] *= 0.5;
FFTOut[3] *= 0.5;
// Attenuate its corresponding negative bin.
FFTOut[6] *= 0.5;
FFTOut[7] *= 0.5;
For the actual tests I'm using a 1024-length FFT and I always provide all the samples so no 0-padding is needed.
// Attenuate
var halfSize = fftWindowLength / 2;
float leftFreq = 0f;
float rightFreq = 22050f;
for( var c = 1; c < halfSize; c++ )
{
var freq = c * (44100d / halfSize);
// Calc. positive and negative frequency indexes.
var k = c * 2;
var nk = (fftWindowLength - c) * 2;
// This kind of attenuation corresponds to a high-pass filter.
// The attenuation at the transition band is linearly applied, could
// this be the cause of the distortion of low frequencies?
var attn = (freq < leftFreq) ?
0 :
(freq < rightFreq) ?
((freq - leftFreq) / (rightFreq - leftFreq)) :
1;
// Attenuate positive and negative bins.
mFFTOut[ k ] *= (float)attn;
mFFTOut[ k + 1 ] *= (float)attn;
mFFTOut[ nk ] *= (float)attn;
mFFTOut[ nk + 1 ] *= (float)attn;
}
Obviously I'm doing something wrong but can't figure out what.
I don't want to use the FFT output as a means to generate a set of FIR coefficients since I'm trying to implement a very basic dynamic equalizer.
What's the correct way to filter in the frequency domain? what I'm missing?
Also, is it really needed to attenuate negative frequencies as well? I've seen an FFT implementation where neg. frequency values are zeroed before synthesis.
Thanks in advance.
There are two issues: the way you use the FFT, and the particular filter.
Filtering is traditionally implemented as convolution in the time domain. You're right that multiplying the spectra of the input and filter signals is equivalent. However, when you use the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) (implemented with a Fast Fourier Transform algorithm for speed), you actually calculate a sampled version of the true spectrum. This has lots of implications, but the one most relevant to filtering is the implication that the time domain signal is periodic.
Here's an example. Consider a sinusoidal input signal x with 1.5 cycles in the period, and a simple low pass filter h. In Matlab/Octave syntax:
N = 1024;
n = (1:N)'-1; %'# define the time index
x = sin(2*pi*1.5*n/N); %# input with 1.5 cycles per 1024 points
h = hanning(129) .* sinc(0.25*(-64:1:64)'); %'# windowed sinc LPF, Fc = pi/4
h = [h./sum(h)]; %# normalize DC gain
y = ifft(fft(x) .* fft(h,N)); %# inverse FT of product of sampled spectra
y = real(y); %# due to numerical error, y has a tiny imaginary part
%# Depending on your FT/IFT implementation, might have to scale by N or 1/N here
plot(y);
And here's the graph:
The glitch at the beginning of the block is not what we expect at all. But if you consider fft(x), it makes sense. The Discrete Fourier Transform assumes the signal is periodic within the transform block. As far as the DFT knows, we asked for the transform of one period of this:
This leads to the first important consideration when filtering with DFTs: you are actually implementing circular convolution, not linear convolution. So the "glitch" in the first graph is not really a glitch when you consider the math. So then the question becomes: is there a way to work around the periodicity? The answer is yes: use overlap-save processing. Essentially, you calculate N-long products as above, but only keep N/2 points.
Nproc = 512;
xproc = zeros(2*Nproc,1); %# initialize temp buffer
idx = 1:Nproc; %# initialize half-buffer index
ycorrect = zeros(2*Nproc,1); %# initialize destination
for ctr = 1:(length(x)/Nproc) %# iterate over x 512 points at a time
xproc(1:Nproc) = xproc((Nproc+1):end); %# shift 2nd half of last iteration to 1st half of this iteration
xproc((Nproc+1):end) = x(idx); %# fill 2nd half of this iteration with new data
yproc = ifft(fft(xproc) .* fft(h,2*Nproc)); %# calculate new buffer
ycorrect(idx) = real(yproc((Nproc+1):end)); %# keep 2nd half of new buffer
idx = idx + Nproc; %# step half-buffer index
end
And here's the graph of ycorrect:
This picture makes sense - we expect a startup transient from the filter, then the result settles into the steady state sinusoidal response. Note that now x can be arbitrarily long. The limitation is Nproc > 2*min(length(x),length(h)).
Now onto the second issue: the particular filter. In your loop, you create a filter who's spectrum is essentially H = [0 (1:511)/512 1 (511:-1:1)/512]'; If you do hraw = real(ifft(H)); plot(hraw), you get:
It's hard to see, but there are a bunch of non-zero points at the far left edge of the graph, and then a bunch more at the far right edge. Using Octave's built-in freqz function to look at the frequency response we see (by doing freqz(hraw)):
The magnitude response has a lot of ripples from the high-pass envelope down to zero. Again, the periodicity inherent in the DFT is at work. As far as the DFT is concerned, hraw repeats over and over again. But if you take one period of hraw, as freqz does, its spectrum is quite different from the periodic version's.
So let's define a new signal: hrot = [hraw(513:end) ; hraw(1:512)]; We simply rotate the raw DFT output to make it continuous within the block. Now let's look at the frequency response using freqz(hrot):
Much better. The desired envelope is there, without all the ripples. Of course, the implementation isn't so simple now, you have to do a full complex multiply by fft(hrot) rather than just scaling each complex bin, but at least you'll get the right answer.
Note that for speed, you'd usually pre-calculate the DFT of the padded h, I left it alone in the loop to more easily compare with the original.
Your primary issue is that frequencies aren't well defined over short time intervals. This is particularly true for low frequencies, which is why you notice the problem most there.
Therefore, when you take really short segments out of the sound train, and then you filter these, the filtered segments wont filter in a way that produces a continuous waveform, and you hear the jumps between segments and this is what generates the clicks you here.
For example, taking some reasonable numbers: I start with a waveform at 27.5 Hz (A0 on a piano), digitized at 44100 Hz, it will look like this (where the red part is 1024 samples long):
So first we'll start with a low pass of 40Hz. So since the original frequency is less than 40Hz, a low-pass filter with a 40Hz cut-off shouldn't really have any effect, and we will get an output that almost exactly matches the input. Right? Wrong, wrong, wrong – and this is basically the core of your problem. The problem is that for the short sections the idea of 27.5 Hz isn't clearly defined, and can't be represented well in the DFT.
That 27.5 Hz isn't particularly meaningful in the short segment can be seen by looking at the DFT in the figure below. Note that although the longer segment's DFT (black dots) shows a peak at 27.5 Hz, the short one (red dots) doesn't.
Clearly, then filtering below 40Hz, will just capture the DC offset, and the result of the 40Hz low-pass filter is shown in green below.
The blue curve (taken with a 200 Hz cut-off) is starting to match up much better. But note that it's not the low frequencies that are making it match up well, but the inclusion of high frequencies. It's not until we include every frequency possible in the short segment, up to 22KHz that we finally get a good representation of the original sine wave.
The reason for all of this is that a small segment of a 27.5 Hz sine wave is not a 27.5 Hz sine wave, and it's DFT doesn't have much to do with 27.5 Hz.
Are you attenuating the value of the DC frequency sample to zero? It appears that you are not attenuating it at all in your example. Since you are implementing a high pass filter, you need to set the DC value to zero as well.
This would explain low frequency distortion. You would have a lot of ripple in the frequency response at low frequencies if that DC value is non-zero because of the large transition.
Here is an example in MATLAB/Octave to demonstrate what might be happening:
N = 32;
os = 4;
Fs = 1000;
X = [ones(1,4) linspace(1,0,8) zeros(1,3) 1 zeros(1,4) linspace(0,1,8) ones(1,4)];
x = ifftshift(ifft(X));
Xos = fft(x, N*os);
f1 = linspace(-Fs/2, Fs/2-Fs/N, N);
f2 = linspace(-Fs/2, Fs/2-Fs/(N*os), N*os);
hold off;
plot(f2, abs(Xos), '-o');
hold on;
grid on;
plot(f1, abs(X), '-ro');
hold off;
xlabel('Frequency (Hz)');
ylabel('Magnitude');
Notice that in my code, I am creating an example of the DC value being non-zero, followed by an abrupt change to zero, and then a ramp up. I then take the IFFT to transform into the time domain. Then I perform a zero-padded fft (which is done automatically by MATLAB when you pass in an fft size bigger than the input signal) on that time-domain signal. The zero-padding in the time-domain results in interpolation in the frequency domain. Using this, we can see how the filter will respond between filter samples.
One of the most important things to remember is that even though you are setting filter response values at given frequencies by attenuating the outputs of the DFT, this guarantees nothing for frequencies occurring between sample points. This means the more abrupt your changes, the more overshoot and oscillation between samples will occur.
Now to answer your question on how this filtering should be done. There are a number of ways, but one of the easiest to implement and understand is the window design method. The problem with your current design is that the transition width is huge. Most of the time, you will want as quick of transitions as possible, with as little ripple as possible.
In the next code, I will create an ideal filter and display the response:
N = 32;
os = 4;
Fs = 1000;
X = [ones(1,8) zeros(1,16) ones(1,8)];
x = ifftshift(ifft(X));
Xos = fft(x, N*os);
f1 = linspace(-Fs/2, Fs/2-Fs/N, N);
f2 = linspace(-Fs/2, Fs/2-Fs/(N*os), N*os);
hold off;
plot(f2, abs(Xos), '-o');
hold on;
grid on;
plot(f1, abs(X), '-ro');
hold off;
xlabel('Frequency (Hz)');
ylabel('Magnitude');
Notice that there is a lot of oscillation caused by the abrupt changes.
The FFT or Discrete Fourier Transform is a sampled version of the Fourier Transform. The Fourier Transform is applied to a signal over the continuous range -infinity to infinity while the DFT is applied over a finite number of samples. This in effect results in a square windowing (truncation) in the time domain when using the DFT since we are only dealing with a finite number of samples. Unfortunately, the DFT of a square wave is a sinc type function (sin(x)/x).
The problem with having sharp transitions in your filter (quick jump from 0 to 1 in one sample) is that this has a very long response in the time domain, which is being truncated by a square window. So to help minimize this problem, we can multiply the time-domain signal by a more gradual window. If we multiply a hanning window by adding the line:
x = x .* hanning(1,N).';
after taking the IFFT, we get this response:
So I would recommend trying to implement the window design method since it is fairly simple (there are better ways, but they get more complicated). Since you are implementing an equalizer, I assume you want to be able to change the attenuations on the fly, so I would suggest calculating and storing the filter in the frequency domain whenever there is a change in parameters, and then you can just apply it to each input audio buffer by taking the fft of the input buffer, multiplying by your frequency domain filter samples, and then performing the ifft to get back to the time domain. This will be a lot more efficient than all of the branching you are doing for each sample.
First, about the normalization: that is a known (non) issue. The DFT/IDFT would require a factor 1/sqrt(N) (apart from the standard cosine/sine factors) in each one (direct an inverse) to make them simmetric and truly invertible. Another possibility is to divide one of them (the direct or the inverse) by N, this is a matter of convenience and taste. Often the FFT routines do not perform this normalization, the user is expected to be aware of it and normalize as he prefers. See
Second: in a (say) 16 point DFT, what you call the bin 0 would correspond to the zero frequency (DC), bin 1 low freq... bin 4 medium freq, bin 8 to the highest frequency and bins 9...15 to the "negative frequencies". In you example, then, bin 1 is actually both the low frequency and medium frequency. Apart from this consideration, there is nothing conceptually wrong in your "equalization". I don't understand what you mean by "the signal gets distorted at low frequencies". How do you observe that ?