A decent computer and lots of volume is recommended.
Well, due to the fear of slipping behind, I felt I better start learning the new Flash language, Actionscript 3, and at first glance, one of the coolest features is definitely the SoundMixer.computeSpectrum function.
This is a quick experiment which uses the spectrum data of a streaming mp3 to trigger animation. Although it dynamically reacts to the beat, there are elements of randomness in this example so the animation / visualisation is different every time.
I’ve seen a few Actionscript 3 visualisations before, though they tend to follow the graphic equaliser tradition, whereas I wanted something a little more creative.
I will release some source code as soon as I have built this into a robust class. I intend to build an easily customisable music visualisation program which can build visualisations from your own graphics with various configurable parameters.
Download: AS3 Audio VisualiserHave fun, but epileptics beware!
The track is Öngyilkos Vasárnap by Venetian Snares
Hi Arne. I have actually posted the source, you can find it here:
http://blog.soulwire.co.uk/download/as3-music-visualisation
I should warn you though, its not pretty! I should be posting this week about a project I’ve been working on which is being launched very soon. I’ve aggreed with the client not to release the engine its based on until December, but when it does come out it will be much more refined and documented than this, which was really just a quick experiment.
I think you’ll have to tweak the volume thresholds for rock music, as beats won’t be as clearly defined (at least more frequent and with greater surrounding noise). Have a look in the source though and play around :)
How did you learn AS3? Are there books you recommend?
Thanks for the tutorials and downloads.
I’m going to keep an eye on this site.
It’s a very interesting work… actually I’m practicing on flach and I’m on my first steps… I hope to have some help… I want to make a simple visualization… it’s called simply “Bar” composed from several lines going up and down as sound meter!… and I wanna use it with actionscript 2.0 would you help me?! and.. otherwise… I want the name of this song used on ur presentation! 10x:)
Awesome visualization, man. I’m working on something such as this for a site I am developing now, and ran across this while looking for some AS3 help. I will be certain to check back and see what you have in the works.
Does this “kick-stab” means of triggering the related animations vary depending on a dynamic sound control? I’ve been looking to implement “pitch – tempo” based syncing of audio and wonder what affect it might have on the subsequent rendered visuals / swf. Any thoughts or comments are welcome!
This is AWESOME – please could you let me know when the class is released as i cant wait to get playing with it.
Genuinely great work!!!
its december! can’t wait till you post so i can learn how to do this. got a art show in February would like to add a layer that moves with the sound for at least a part of it, and not have to animate it myself.
If the background were changing colour in accordance to the…intensity of the song…it would be just awesome (not that it isnt already)
What i mean is…the red background should also be expressive through the music, it seems a bit plain…
wow…
I’ve been following this project for some time now, I was hoping if it was alright to share you wouldn’t mind. I’m working on an open framework to use monome devices with Flash. I would love to mess around with this as well to see if I can use it in conjunction somehow. A simple question to throw on top of the pile is whether or not a live audio source could be supplemented for the local sound file.
Thank you for the great project and lovely site.
Hi Sighlent,
First of all, thanks for your interest ;) I was aiming to get the visualisation engine out before Christmas but have been busy with work. That said, part of the delay was due to an improvement in the beat detection, so it should be much more solid and at the same time more generally flexible once it’s ready, in a couple of weeks I would say.
Your question about a live audio source is a good one. I’ve been thinking about this too. The easiest way would be to serve up chunks of a stream to flash disguised, as it were, as an MP3 file. I know Flash Player 10 has better audio capabilities, mainly with the ability to create sound waves and feed them back as audio output, though perhaps there is a way around the long awaited computeSpectrum (or equivalent) for microphone data. The Sound.extract method might be worth looking into too.
I’d really like to hear more about what you’re doing with the monomer devices. Do they currently have an Actionscript API or is that what you hope to achieve?
You are amazing
This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for wrtniig!
I have a live audio Visualizer using myself standing up and down to any sound coming in from the computers microphone. Its sort of a Human Graphic Equalizer written with Processing. The problem is you have to install this plugin:
http://www.softsynth.com/jsyn/plugins/
in order for your browser to listen to your mic. I would love to re-create using Flash. If you install that plug-in you can take a look at it here:
http://itp.nyu.edu/~cb1591/philanthrodate/GE/