Audio visualization usually relies on hand-crafted features, like intensity, timbre or pitch. These metrics are defined by humans and are biased towards our cultural representation of sound. In this project, we have trained a Neural Net to generate these features directly from spectrograms, in an unsupervised way. We thus get rid of this bias and hope the resulting visualizations can help us perceive music in different ways.
Category Archives: Visualization
projectM ~ Modern Milkdrop Visualizations
projectM is an open-source project that reimplements the esteemed Winamp Milkdrop by Geiss in a more modern, cross-platform reusable library. Its purpose in life is to read an audio input and to produce mesmerizing visuals, detecting tempo, and rendering advanced equations into a limitless array of user-contributed visualizations.

projectm-visualizer.org
github.com/projectM-visualizer/projectm
github.com/OfficialIncubo/milk-fk/tree/master/milk
github.com/OfficialIncubo/projectm
sourceforge.net/projects/projectm (2012)
Foobar2000 components:
www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_vis_projectM
foo_uie_vis_projectM
Android
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.psperl.prjM
Steam
store.steampowered.com/app/1358800/projectM_Music_Visualizer
Tuniac ~ iTunes Styled Windows Player
Tuniac is an iTunes style media player / manager for Windows, with an advanced playlist editor, search as you type and queue support.
Features:
- Search as you type
- Advanced queueing
- Supports many audio formats
- OpenGL Sonique Visual Plugin renderer
- Small cpu and memory footprint
Supports:
- MPEG-1 Audio (mp3, mp2, mp1)
- FLAC (flac, fla, oga, ogg)
- Advanced Audio Coding (aac, m4a, m4b, mp4)
- Apple Lossless Audio Codec aka ALAC (m4a)
- Windows Media Audio (wma)
- Vorbis (ogg)
- Opus (opus)
- WavPack (wv)
- TAK Audio (tak)
- TrueAudio (tta)
- Monkeys Audio (ape, mac)
- Musepack (mpc, mp+, mpp)
- OptimFrog (ofr, ofs)
- Shorten (shn)
- Dolby Digital (ac3)
- DSD (dff, dfs)
- PCM (wav, aif)
- CD Audio (cda)
- Speex (spx)
- MOD Formats (mod, mo3, xm, it, s3m, mtm)
- Game Audio Formats (adx, umx)
- MIDI (mid)
- radio streaming of most the above formats.

The Loudspeaker Explorer ~ Colaboratory Notebook
A speaker measurement visualization, analysis and comparison tool.
glBars ~ OpenGL Visualisation Plugin
This is an OpenGL bars visualization plugin (as seen in XMMS and XBMC/Kodi). It’s adapted from the jack_glbars project by Nedko Arnaudov. glBars works as a JACK standalone and audio plugin (LV2 or VST).

github.com/DISTRHO/glBars
distrho.sourceforge.io/plugins
github.com/DISTRHO/DPF-Plugins
foo_vis_shpeck ~ Foobar MilkDrop Visualizations
The foo_vis_shpeck component runs Winamp visualization plugins in a stand-alone window, a Columns UI panel or Default UI element.
Documentation
Download
Hydrogen Audio Topic
Download Winamp
Shpeck enables Foobar2000 to display dynamic graphics that react to the beat. It’s possible to toggle between fullscreen and windowed modes.
Install the foo_vis_shpeck plugin, combined with Winamp’s MilkDrop visualizations.
- Download and install Winamp (or at least the folder structure for the plugins)
- Download and install foo_vis_shpeck
- Download some visualizations
- Uncompress visualizations and copy to System > Program Files > Winamp > Plugins
- Create a new foobar DUI panel or tab and add the new UI element Playback Visualisation > Shpeck
- Configure the plugin at Preferences > Visualisations > Shpeck
- Configure visualizations

Resources:
www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_vis_shpeck
www.winamparchive.org
archive.org/details/tucows_193563_Winamp
www.mediafire.com/download/8hxarja92q9q99c/foobar2000-milkdrop-2.25c.7z
forums.winamp.com/forum/winamp/winamp-discussion/4615655-winamp-5-9-2-released
Guides:
Milkdrop in Foobar on Windows 8 ~ vault-tec.info/post/51743506694/milkdrop-in-foobar2000-on-windows-8
Additional Presets:
sourceforge.net/projects/mdpresetpack/
www.thefreewindows.com/21777/download-free-milkdrop2-50000-presets-megapack/
archive.org/details/Milkdrop252kPresetCollection.7z
… some archives from this milkdrop contest thread on Winamp forum and put everything into a single archive. Some of the presets are nice and quite original, but most of them are variations. The ones that seemed nice to me I copied and added exclamation mark to their names. ~ hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,59388.msg914054.html#msg914054
XMPlay ~ Extensible Windows Player
XMPlay is an audio player, supporting the OGG / MP3 / MP2 / MP1 / WMA / AAC / MP4 / WAV / AIFF / CDA / MO3 / IT / XM / S3M / MTM / MOD / UMX audio formats, PLS / M3U / ASX / WAX / CUE playlists, and ZIP archives. A load more audio and archive file formats are also supported via plugins.
When XMPlay was first released in 1998, only the XM file format was supported, hence the name “XMPlay”.
www.xmplay.com
support.xmplay.com
ssz.bitbucket.io (Input & Archive plugins)
Common Music ~ Algorithmic Music Composition
Common Music (CM) is a real-time music composition system implemented in JUCE/C++ and Scheme. It generates musical output via MIDI, OSC, CLM, FOMUS and CSOUND. Its user application is called GRACE (Graphical Real-time Algorithmic Composition Environment)
Features:
- Algorithmic music composition environment
- Runs on Mac, Windows and Linux
- Real time scheduling of musical algorithms
- Two coding languages for designing algorithms: S7 Scheme and SAL (an easy-to-learn alternate)
- MIDI input/output
- CLM/Sndlib audio system built in (Scottstaedt)
- CCRMA digital audio instrument definitions built in (Scottstaedt)
- Open Sound Control input/output
- Metronomes and running algorithm redefinition for live coding
- Data visualization
- Music pattern definitions
- Fomus system built in for computing music notations (Psenicka)
commonmusic.sourceforge.net
sourceforge.net/projects/commonmusic
foo_musical_spectrum ~ Foobar2000 DUI Spectrum Display
This is a “musical spectrum”, displayed accordingly to how the spectrum is divided in music (notes, semitones, etc).

IDTE ~ ID3 Tag Editor & Player
IDTE is a full featured tag editor for Windows which supports tagging of FLAC, APE, ID3V1.x/2.x, WMA, LYRICS, and VORBIS tags in audio files.
It also supports the playback of 40+ various lossy and lossless music formats such as FLAC, ALAC, OGG, APE, MP3 etc.
It can rename files based on the tag information, export tag information, create playlists, search for incomplete tags on Internet, fetch lyrics, fetch cover art, supports CUE sheets, can process multiple files at same time, allows for batch file processing, supports SFX, visualizations and more…
Mcool ~ Lightweight Music Player
Minimalist local music player for windows, transparent, borderless and buttonless.
Features:
- Portable, free, open-source software. (Delphi, MIT open-source license)
- Operating System: Windows XP/7/8/10, 简体 / 繁體 / English / Unicode
- Minimalist, transparent, “no interface, only music”.
- Optimized for local lossless music playback. Powered by Bass library, with excellent performance and high quality sound effects. Modular design, can be highly customized.
- Supports lightweight media library, lyrics and visual effects. Can be minimized to the system tray, takes very few system resources, suitable to listening to music when working.
- These features come from user suggestions: tag editing, automatic switching list, play queue, mouse gestures, equalizer, audio device selection, the global volume wheel (over systray), font settings, minimalist mode, mouse transparent, pin to desktop and a simple layout.
- Supports APE / FLAC / WavPack / MP3 / OGG / TTA / TAK / Musepack / AAC / AC3 / WMA / Wav / CD / ALAC / Aiff / MOD / CUE (almost all local music formats from lossy to lossless, and supports video formats by plug-in)

StereoTool ~ Analysis & Imaging Tool
The Complete Stereo Imaging And Analysis Tool. StereoTool offers ultra-precise control of input gain and individual pan for left and right channels, accurate visual feedback reflecting the signal content with; a vectorscope, PPM meters for inputs/outputs, phase correlation meter permanently monitoring the signal and individual left and right polarity reversal – No dongle or registration required – 100% Freeware!

