Am I missing a more efficient FFT algorithm?

[S0lo]

you get more bins when zero padding.

Yes - and more importantly: the content of the bins below these extra bins will be totally different from what a true N-point DFT would compute because the analysis frequencies of the sinusoids are completely different ones

Right. Completely different analysis frequencies.

[Kallyn]

I appreciate the responses! I figured posting my code wouldn't be necessary since I'd probably need to ditch it in favor of a library.. I'll check out FFTW and pffft and see which is faster, and i guess i'll use the one that has the best licensing and usage policies if they both come up the same. Thanks!