Audio responsive video visualisers...

Yo gentlemen,

Been wanting to find some sort of audio responsive visualiser to be used in live sets.

Something which generates imagery/colours/flashes synced to the incoming audio signal of whatever is plugged into it. Not so much looking at VJ software, that'd be another thing alltogether - more just looking for something to be project over us while playing, envelop us in colours/images etc.

I found Critter & Guitari's video and rhythm scope, which are pretty neat - but a tad expensive for what they're doing (surely this sort of this can be achieved at a cheaper price, or even DIY'd?)

http://youtu.be/Y37J0Wv71VM

there's a visual programming language with some ridiculously unmemorizable name like viviviviviiiiv or something

Ask squee, he does this sort of thing for a living, if I recall correctly.

If you've got max for live you can use jitter to do this sort of thing. Never really looked into it...

  On 7/31/2014 at 9:26 PM, Ragnar said:

there's a visual programming language with some ridiculously unmemorizable name like viviviviviiiiv or something

But yeah if you have max for live, there's pre-built modules that can make your live considerably easier (eg Vizzable - http://vizzable.zeal.co/ )

*mom calling for dinner*
oh Squeeeeeeee....

Thanks for the speedy feedback - afraid that VVVV coding one is way over my head - and i'd be a bit hesitant with the max for live thing - we use ableton 9 as the brain of our sets, but all it does is send MIDI to our hardware, and i'd like to give Ableton as little to do as possible just to avoid the possibility of it crashing while live etc.

so I guess i'm looking for something more 'analog' - an image/colour visualiser/generator based purely on sound input?

winamp vis? is that possible

I've been playing with vizzable lately and been surprised at the stability, even with lots of layering/routing and modulation of signals I didn't notice a lot of CPU usage, maybe 10-15%.

Outside of the other suggestions you could look into http://www.lzxindustries.net/ , but you're going to pay $$$ for their stuff.

why don't you facilitate something like the pixivisor

http://www.warmplace.ru/soft/pixivisor/

for more pro stuff go vvvv.org or derivative.ca or hunt through the ancient

http://www.audiovisualizers.com/toolshak/toolshak.html

get a speaker and glue a piece of wrinkled mylar to it, and aim a laser pointer with a cellphone vibrator motor taped to it.

patch that speaker into a headphone amplifier and you're good to go bra.

for extra idm points, find a way to get jitter and i guess a projector into that arrangement.

Not what you want, but...

There is a playstation version, the very first playstation, that has a mode when you boot it without a game to visualize inserted audio cd's. You can change the visuals using the controller, or it will automatically scroll through different algorithms.

I can't quickly find examples of it on youtube, it is basically like a lofi winamp, but pretty cool nonetheless maybe to mix with other visuals? Don't think it was in every ps1 though, maybe the last version of the bigger model.

Found an example;

You could always jump into (currently highly expensive) modular video synthesizers....

  On 7/31/2014 at 9:10 PM, TRiP said:

http://youtu.be/Y37J0Wv71VM

Hmmm... that doesn't work at all for one simple reason: it's not in sync with the music. And before all you go "rabblerabblerabble it's only a couple of miliseconds of latency" hear me out: the visuals react to each and every hit on the drum and each ghost hits, which is cool and all, but this means that the latency becomes more apparent and the visuals will end up being what seems like one big chaos of stuff happening without any real connection to the music. So instead of having the visuals react to all the hits it would be WAY better if the visuals only reacted to the bassdrum and the snare and only within a certain range of velocity so the visuals don't react to all the ghost hits. Less is more when it comes to visuals unless it's in perfect sync. When I do visuals for concerts or parties I am constant triggering videos, cue points and so on to make sure that the visuals are in perfect sync to what happens.

Latency in general, when it comes to audiovisual performances, completely destroys the experience. If your eyes don't react to what your ears hear then your visuals won't have the desired effect.