When did I say anything about not understanding the math of the FT? I took a whole semester of classes in signals, control theory, comms, etc. Derived FT, FFT, and friends, from scratch. I understand the math. But I have limited intuition about what I can do with the math. I can look it up in a book, or plug and chug, but it's not very fluid. The amount of times I've needed to manipulate equations since that class is zero.

Yikes.