Visualizations
JR could add some technical-oriented visualizations, that can be activated simultaneously. They are not intended to replace or integrate standard visualizations, that remain for pure aesthetic pleasure and entertainment purposes.
- Oscilloscope, with amplitude scale that can be labelled in dB, percent, sample value
- Spectrum Analyzer, with log or linear frequency scale and amplitude scale in dB
- The log scale spectrum analyzer could have a musical keyboard under the frequency scale, with pitches aligned to the correct frequency. The highest energy peaks could brighten the corresponding keyboard key and display its name.
There are two products that suggested me this visualization: Transcribe!
http://www.seventhstring.com/, a tool that helps people transcribing the musical score to an audio track, and MuseOn
http://dbhovel.com/Extras/MuseOn.aspx, a plug-in for Windows Media Player (only) that does (approximate) note and chord detection in real time
- Output level meter, that can respond as a VU meter, PPM, K-System/RMS (see
http://www.digido.com/portal/pmodule_id=11/pmdmode=fullscreen/pageadder_page_id=59 on the Digital Domain site for a discussion of K-System)
- The output level meter could display the average track level (reply gain) and peak level on its side, when the audio track has these audio analysis information already calculated
- The output level meter could become red when a “digital over” is detected, that is, an arbitrary number of consecutive samples with maximum amplitude is reproduced; the user would have to click on the red lights to reset them
- Optionally the output level meter can show the output dB SPL level from the speaker system (it is dependent from the analog knob positions on the amplifier and requires human calibration). One could add “presets” that remind the user of the position of the knobs used (classical music, pop music, reference, etc…)
- A blinking light in sync with beat markers, that would blink in a different colour when the measure changes
- DJ-oriented scrolling waveform display with beat markers highlighted. The scrolling waveform visualization should not draw by directly sending a long sequence of dot coordinates to the GUI, but should prepare a bitmap image in background and refresh that image to the screen, in order to have a smoother scroll effect. I guess that using DirectX would make the display even smoother.
- Scrolling spectrogram