Synaesthesia visualizer

[sinclair44]

Synaesthesia is the coolest music visualizer I've seen. It doesn't so something silly with the waveform, but is much more "musical"; as I understand it, it does a Fourier transform, displaying the frequencies along the y axis and displaying differences in the two stereo channels in the x axis (and doing some other cool stuff with color that I don't totally understand). Basically, you see higher frequencies near the top and instruments primarily on the left/right channels on the left/right of the screen. In this way, the visual is extremely representative of the music, e.g. you can often see individual instruments.

Explanations don't really do the program justice (nor do screenshots); you really have to see it for yourself. There are three methods for this:

Best, yet most difficult: Run the software yourself. Unfortunately, it was written for Linux, which I realize that a large majority of people don't use; the Windows port is of a very ancient version, and, since I myself have a Mac, I haven't tried that port. Brief instuctions: Linux people, your distro probably provides a package, I know Ubuntu at least does; if not, building from the source archive is easy. Mac power users, I've got a set of source patches I can send you, but it only runs in X11 and requires esd for input; if you didn't understand that then building it yourself on a Mac is not for you . Windows, sorry, don't have an Intel computer, you're on your own.

Since most of you are not going to be able to run a recent version of the software, I've prepared some demo videos. Of course, I used OCR songs, specifically Disconnected and Journey's End, which IMHO turned out rather cool.

Easiest and lowest-quality: I have uploaded the videos to Google Video. The visual quality is pretty horrible, sorry about that; I had only the low-bitrate XviD files (see below) left to use, and re-recording was out of the question due to the pain involved. It's still watchable (though I suggest you set it to "Original Size" and not fullscreen ). The more annoying problem is that the sound was down-mixed from stereo to mono, so you loose the panning effects which are reflected in the video.

Disconnected on Google Video

Journey's End on Google Video

Fairly easy, fairly good quality: I have the videos in XviD format, but with no sound. This is for a number of reasons (save my bandwidth; save your bandwidth if you already have the mp3; etc). The links to the OCR page for the songs are above; if you start the video and the music at exactly the same time, they'll be in sync, which is very important for it to look right.

Disconnected XviD video-only download

Journey's End XviD video-only download

(Some stuff to look for include the lead instrument in Disconnected about 1/3 up from the bottom, and pixie's voice as a pink blob in Journey's End at the very top.)

I hope you find this as kickass as I do! Any questions/problems/comments, post here. If you find any other (legally-distributable) songs that look cool, I might be able to do another recording or two!

EDIT: Videos added later

Lava Reef Act 1 (from S&K) on Google Video (the video quality should be much better on this one)

[danimal cannon]

I love what Synthethasia really is. Apt name for a visualization program.

[The Damned]

What?678910

[jmr]

Certainly looks interesting in the videos, but I can't get it to work at all with my windows-based laptop, even when using the program's internal CD player.

[sinclair44]

Certainly looks interesting in the videos, but I can't get it to work at all with my windows-based laptop, even when using the program's internal CD player.

Not having Windows, I have absolutely no idea what's wrong, sorry. The port is extremely old, so you may want to try some sort of legacy compatibility mode or something, which IIRC Windows has buried somewhere.

If you're really desperate, burning and booting an Ubuntu LiveCD and running it from there is always an option.

[Hale-Bopp]

I love what Synthethasia really is. Apt name for a visualization program.

That's amazing. I just watched that whole thing. Somehow I can't help but think that anyone could have this ability, so long as we are somehow able to find a way to tap into it.

[friendlyHunter]

Watched all the parts as well. I've seen another documentary-type thing about that guy before, but it never ceases to amaze me.

And, what's this, a visualization program that actually FITS with the music?? It's about time! Watched the videos, love how the singing is a different colour than the rest =]

Could we see this in action with a chiptune? I'd imagine that'd show every note pretty clearly (but I could be wrong).

[The Author]

Disconnected is a lot yellower than that.

And there was too much black in journey's end. The background is white.

[supremespleen]

Windows version doesn't work for me. Too bad.

[sinclair44]

Could we see this in action with a chiptune? I'd imagine that'd show every note pretty clearly (but I could be wrong).

I just tried it on some Sonic 2/3 chiptunes, and what ends up happening is that, with minimal stereo usage, all the notes end up mushed in a line in the center. There are some evenly-spaced "bumps" along the line, representing the chords, but you can't really see too much in the way of distinguishing the instruments. That said, Lava Reef Zone 1 does look kinda cool; I'll see what I can do about a video.

EDIT: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5463088612673910678&hl=en (I just uploaded this, so the tags won't be live for a few hours, but the video plays fine)