Tag Archives: macOS

lowhum ~ Deep Brown Noise For Focus

Posted by tom2tec on

Deep brown noise for focus, for the macOS menu bar. 

Single-purpose menu bar app that generates deep brown noise locally and plays it on loop. Install it, click play, forget about it. Cumulative-sum brown noise through a Butterworth bandpass (1 to 500 Hz, 20 Hz sub-bass highpass), RMS-normalized per chunk, crossfaded at boundaries. Everything is stored in ~/.lowhum/. Playback streams through PortAudio via memory-mapped files, so the full WAV never sits in RAM. The app polls audio devices every 2 seconds and stops instantly if headphones disconnect or a Bluetooth device drops.

Menu bar controls

The menu bar icon is a template image, so macOS handles dark/light mode automatically. Further, use it for:

  • Play / Stop from the menu bar
  • Pick any connected audio device from the Output Device submenu
  • Noise color selection (brown, pink, white)
  • Auto-stops when headphones connect or disconnect

Requires macOS and Python 3.12+.

lmarkmann.github.io/lowhum
github.com/lmarkmann/lowhum

References:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_noise

Aceforge ~ AI Music Workstation

Posted by tom2tec on

AceForge is a local-first AI music workstation for macOS Silicon powered by ACE-Step

Features:

  • .100% Local (only needs to download models once)
  • Music Generation with ACE-Step prompts
    • Use Stem separation to rebalance vocals vs instrumentals
    • Use existing Audio as reference (optional)
    • Train ACE-Step LoRAs from your own datasets
      • Mass-create _prompt.txt / _lyrics.txt files
      • Auto-tag datasets using MuFun-ACEStep (experimental)
  • Stem Splitting using Demucs for high-quality audio separation
  • Voice Cloning TTS using XTTS v2
  • MIDI Generation using basic-pitch for audio-to-MIDI transcription
  • Embedded Music Player to explore generation catalog
  • Manage and reuse prompt presets

github.com/audiohacking/AceForge

Sampletoy ~ Sampler & Synthesiser

Posted by tom2tec on

Sampletoy is a radical new musical instrument / plaything;
part sampler, part granular synthesiser.

Use it to capture sounds through the microphone,
then play, loop, pitch and distort them live on the screen.

www.elf-audio.com/sampletoy
www.facebook.com/elfaudioapps

FeelUOwn ~ Hackable Music Player

Posted by tom2tec on

trying to be a robust, user-friendly and hackable music player

Features:

  • Stable and Easy to Use
  • One-click installation, packaged for all popular platforms (e.g., Arch Linux, Windows, macOS, etc.)
  • Plug-ins for various media resource platforms, making full and reasonable use of free online resources (e.g., YouTube Music)
  • Comprehensive basic functions, including desktop lyrics, intelligent resource replacement, multiple audio quality options, and the nowplaying protocol
  • Core modules have good test coverage, and core interfaces maintain good backward compatibility
  • Large-scale support: AI radio, natural language to playlist conversion, etc.
  • High Playability:
    • Provides a TCP-based interactive control protocol
    • Provides an MCP Server (experimental feature) for programmatic control of player/resource capabilities
  • Text-based playlists for easy sharing with friends and synchronization across devices
  • Supports Python-based configuration files (.fuorc), similar to .vimrc and .emacs

github.com/feeluown/FeelUOwn
sourceforge.net/projects/feeluown.mirror

mididash ~ Open Source MIDI Router

Posted by tom2tec on

Mididash is an open source MIDI routing software with a node-based interface and Lua scripting. A modern take on programs like MIDI-OX.

Features:

  • High performance built with Tauri and Rust
  • Cross-platform available on Windows, Linux and macOS
  • Node-based MIDI routing allows for versatile configurations
  • Hot-plugging reconnect or replace MIDI devices
  • MIDI monitoring for inputs, outputs or individual nodes
  • Pre-configured nodes for MIDI splitting, mapping and more
  • Script nodes using Lua 5.4
  • Lightweight installer under 10MB

tiagolr.github.io/mididash
github.com/tiagolr/mididash
sourceforge.net/projects/mididash

ASH Toolset ~ Headphone Correction & Binaural Synthesis

Posted by tom2tec on

The Audio Spatialisation for Headphones Toolset is a set of tools for headphone correction and binaural synthesis of spatial audio systems on headphones.

Features:

  • Headphone Correction — Generate headphone correction filters in WAV format for IR convolution or as configurations for graphic equalisers.
  • Binaural Room Simulation — Generate customised binaural simulations of different acoustic environments including control rooms, studios, halls, and more. Resulting filters can be saved in WAV format or SOFA format for IR convolution.
  • Equalizer APO Integration — Auto configures Equalizer APO to apply created filters and perform headphone correction and binaural room simulation.
  • HeSuVi Compatibility — Generates filters in formats compatible with HeSuVi, a headphone surround virtualization tool for Equalizer APO.
  • SOFA Format Compatibility – Load HRTF datasets and export customised binaural responses in SOFA format
ASH Headphone Toolset

github.com/ShanonPearce/ASH-Toolset
sourceforge.net/projects/ash-toolset

AudioPlayer ~ CD Image Player

Posted by tom2tec on

This is an audio player for Windows, Linux and MacOS.

It is designed to play audio CDs dumped to raw bin/cue files.

The bin/cue files can be loaded from a folder on disk, or from a zip archive.

This player provides a convenient way of listening to dumps in that format without any additional step(s):

  • No need to mount the cue file as a virtual drive.
  • No need to extract the cue/bin files from zip files.
  • No need to convert the data to wav/flac/ogg/mp3.

This is currently NOT supported:

  • Playing from archives in 7z and rar formats.
  • Playing music from other formats such as wav, mp3, flac, ogg, etc. Just use a regular music player for that.

Album and track metadata is loaded from the CDTEXT information when present in cue file.

Additional metadata is optionally retrieved from CueToolsDB, including album art.

Lyrics are optionally retrieved from LRCLIB. Using a local LRCLIB sqlite3 database is also supported.

AudioPlayer Interface

github.com/huguesv/AudioPlayer

foo_scrobbler_mac ~ Foo Scrobbler For Macs

Posted by tom2tec on

Foo Scrobbler (foo_scrobbler_mac) is a native Last.fm scrobbling plugin for foobar2000 on macOS. Submits tracks based on precise playback rules, caches scrobbles when offline, and operates silently after one-time authentication. Built using the official foobar2000 plugin API, it focuses on reliability, low overhead, and correct metadata handling. Fully open-source under GPLv3.

Supports macOS ≥ 11.5 on both Intel and ARM.

github.com/zfoxer/foo_scrobbler_mac

caudec ~ Multiprocess Audio Converter

Posted by tom2tec on

caudec is a command-line utility that transcodes (converts) audio files from one format (codec) to another, among other things.

It leverages multi-core CPUs and runs multiple processes concurrently (one per file and per codec, and more than one thread per codec when it supports it). The objective is to hog the CPU as much and as long as possible. One strategy is to sort input files by size, so that the largest files potentially get more threads towards the end of the job.

Features:

  • Supported input formats / codecs: WAV, AIFF, CAF, FLAC, WavPack, Monkey’s Audio, ALAC.
  • Supported output formats / codecs: all of the above, as well as LossyWAV / LossyFLAC, MP3, AAC (.m4a), Ogg Vorbis, Opus.
  • Supported platforms: macOS, Linux.
  • Transcoding to several different codecs at once is possible. In that case, decoding of input files is done only once.
  • Metadata is preserved (as much as possible) from one codec to another.
  • Artwork can be embedded into each file, and / or copied to the output directory. It can be done selectively (e.g. embed and / or copy one image for lossless files, and another image for lossy files).
  • Audio can be resampled (e.g. 48kHz to 44.1kHz) and downmixed (e.g. 6 channels to stereo). A profile can be provided to set a maximum value for the number of channels, bit depth and sampling rate. When a profile is provided, the source will only be altered after decoding and before encoding, if some metric of the source is above the given profile.
  • Multiprocess ReplayGain scanner for FLAC, WavPack, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Opus.
  • Ability to hard link lossy files to a different directory when encoding to WavPack Hybrid. The point is to have two libraries that takes the storage of just one, with a lossy collection that has its own root directory and that’s easy to drag and drop to a device such as a smartphone or a Digital Audio Player (DAP).
  • Ability to touch files and album directories using metadata to reflect the music’s release date and duration (see example below).

github.com/gcocatre/caudec

foobar2000 ~ macOS Components

Posted by tom2tec on

A collection of macOS components for foobar2000 v2 – mostly remakes of the components, which I used to love back then on windows.

DISCLAIMER: All of this is a WIP, actively tested on my foobar2000 instance, but WIP nonetheless, it may crash your foobar.

Extensions:

SimPlaylistLightweight playlist viewer with album art and grouping1.1.0📖
Playlist OrganizerTree-based playlist management1.1.0📖
Waveform SeekbarAudio visualization seekbar with effects1.0.0📖
Album Art (Extended)Multi-type album art viewer with selection support1.0.0📖
Queue ManagerVisual playback queue management1.0.0📖
Last.fm ScrobblerLast.fm integration and scrobbling1.0.0–

hydrogenaudio.org/index.php/topic,128911.0
github.com/JendaT/fb2k-components-mac-suite

Cardinal ~ Virtual Modular Synthesizer Plugin

Posted by tom2tec on

A fully free and self-contained modular synthesizer based on the popular VCV Rack. Available in AudioUnit/CLAP/LV2/VST2/VST3 plugin formats and as a standalone app for FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, Windows and the Web.

cardinal.kx.studio
github.com/DISTRHO/Cardinal

Cava ~ Cross-platform Audio Visualizer

Posted by tom2tec on

Cava is a bar spectrum audio visualizer for terminal or desktop (SDL).

Cava works on:

  • Linux
  • FreeBSD
  • macOS
  • Windows

This program is not intended for scientific use. It’s written to look responsive and aesthetic when used to visualize music.

github.com/karlstav/cava
Cavalier ~ Visualize Audio With CAVA