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[toddelving]

Hello everyone love this product and have been using it for many years. I like to use a visualization while listening to Audiobooks  and have used soundspectrum in the past but am having issues with it. I know JRiver had a visualizor in the past but cant find it. Can someone help me locate it! Thanks

[blgentry]

Visualizations were a favorite thing of mine in the beginning of digital music players on computers.  Super old school Winamp had a bunch of weirdo visualizations written by 3rd parties.  The best ones I used came from some of the world's great programming countries:  Primarily from France as I recall, but Bulgaria could have had some visualization authors too... it's been too long for me to remember.

I remember what everyone loved though:  Milkdrop.  I know several people who still use that one.

I think it would be a wonderful addition to MC to have some really world class visualizations.  It can be fascinating to watch changing patterns as you get lost in the music.

Brian. 

[eve]

Visualizations were a favorite thing of mine in the beginning of digital music players on computers.  Super old school Winamp had a bunch of weirdo visualizations written by 3rd parties.  The best ones I used came from some of the world's great programming countries:  Primarily from France as I recall, but Bulgaria could have had some visualization authors too... it's been too long for me to remember.

I remember what everyone loved though:  Milkdrop.  I know several people who still use that one.

I think it would be a wonderful addition to MC to have some really world class visualizations.  It can be fascinating to watch changing patterns as you get lost in the music.

Brian.

Wont happen. Anyone who was doing visualizers and had skill, and wanted to stick with that, probably started doing VJ stuff, not consumer visualizations.
Unlike consumers, there's an actual market for really high end real time visualizations, like a very serious market.

[toddelving]

The only one I knew about was Soundspectrum and they are not in business anymore

[eve]

The only one I knew about was Soundspectrum and they are not in business anymore

Milkdrop2 / ProjectM (an open source re-implementation with active development) is something to look at.

The issue is GOOD real time visualizers are very performance heavy, like high end gaming heavy. They just aren't optimized in the same manner as real time game rendering is either. Even with fancy GPUs you need to be quite smart with something like Resolume or Synthesia in terms of how you're building visualizations to maintain the targeted frame rate / res.

There's nothing major stopping someone from say, writing a music visualizer into a game rendering engine, which does come with visual compromises but would be far more performant. It's just that the market isn't really there and if you're using Resolume or Synthesia, there's a good chance there's a higher bar for visual fidelity required.
This is software that's designed to drive multiple projectors or display walls for shows, not so much a visualizer on your monitor at home.

Would you rather write some software that like 100 guys are going to use to get some visuals while they listen to music or would you rather be snagging professional customers doing high budget productions? 

I think that's part of the 'mystery' of why there isn't as much in the way of music visualizers anymore. I mean that and the iPod and then streaming.

[blgentry]

eve, while I'm sure that your information is accurate regarding the high end visualization industry, I think you're overstating it.

In 1999 we had very good visualizations that ran on computers of the time at reasonable screen sizes like 1280x1024.  I'm certain that this is still possible.  I'm certain that with 22 years of computer advancement we can now do something similar using larger resolutions.  Refresh rates back then were very high in some cases.  I used to run at 70 to 100 Hz on most of my monitors back then. 

I think the desire just isn't there any more for programmers.  The importance and "special" quality of music has been vastly diminished in the past 20 years, mostly due to pirating and streaming.  That's another discussion, but I think it ties directly to the lack of visualization software.

Brian.

[HPBEME]

Hello everyone love this product and have been using it for many years. I like to use a visualization while listening to Audiobooks  and have used soundspectrum in the past but am having issues with it. I know JRiver had a visualizor in the past but cant find it. Can someone help me locate it! Thanks

I don't think the OP's original ask ever got answered.

All you have to do is right-click in the large playing now window, and pick from a large number of built-in visualizations available in the context menu (see picture in link below). In order to see that context menu however, a track must be playing. I don't use audiobooks with MC, so I'm not sure visualizations work with that.
https://i.imgur.com/z3Ujel7.jpg

None of these are going to knock your socks off, but they are integrated directly with MC, so I still use them occasionally because they are convenient. However, some of the visualizations look so dated and with blurry text, it's embarrassing. JRiver really should consider removing ALL of the combo track info/visualizations in the Collage folder - they are horrendous.  I have to believe that more than a few (thousand) trial users decided against buying MC if they activated those visualizations.  It is simply not a good look for JRiver to keep them - they are that ugly.

That said, two of MC's built-in 3D visualizations - Spectrum Analyzer and Particle Creation - actually have some promise, but definitely need way more pizzazz. The other 3D options are either pretty bad, or just a slight variations. To my knowledge though, not a single update to any of the visualizations (2D or 3D) has been made for 20 years.

FYI… If you are not seeing that context menu even when playing a track, something is wrong with your installation. All those visualizations in the screenshot are included by default with every install.  Well… except for G-Force, which I am unable to get working at all within MC (though I can get the standalone version kind of working).  For additional information about that and other visualization options, go here: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,133935.0.html

As I explain at considerable length in the linked post, you can get Milkdrop and the tens of thousands of presets to work with MC right now by using a program called Wallpaper Engine (further info in linked post).

There are a number of programs/options for high-quality visualizations, but none of them integrate with MC directly. They all have to be launched separately and viewed as a standalone. Wouldn't it be fantastic if JRiver partnered with Steam as a way to integrate high-quality visualizations with MC? I personally would be willing to pay premium $10 or so to have this capability built-in.

[blgentry]

Thanks HPBME. 

Unfortunately for me, visualizations appear to be Windows specific.  I have a visualizations menu but it is empty on my Mac version of MC29.  I guess I thought there weren't any visualizations any more since I don't see any.  I see now that it's platform specific.  Oh well.

Can visualizations be run full screen?  How about on a specific monitor?  Because what you really want is the use the MC Standard View interface normally and have the visualizations as large as possible on some there display.  Maybe a projector or just a nice big TV.

Brian.

[HPBEME]

I have a visualizations menu but it is empty on my Mac version of MC29.  I guess I thought there weren't any visualizations any more since I don't see any.  I see now that it's platform specific.  Oh well.

Never occurred to me that visualizations were only available for specific OS's. I wonder if the same is true for Linux users too. Can someone from JRiver please verify that visualizations are not available across the board? Who knows, maybe it's just bug and you can get your visualizations back

Can visualizations be run full screen?  How about on a specific monitor?  Because what you really want is the use the MC Standard View interface normally and have the visualizations as large as possible on some there display.  Maybe a projector or just a nice big TV.

Not sure if you're referring to MC's built-in versions or the other options I noted in my earlier post. Regardless, both the built-in and other options go full screen.  Wallpaper engine most definitely supports multi-monitor setups… In fact, I would say it's unrivaled in that regard. I highly recommend parting with four dollars and purchasing your lifetime program license.  It is truly a spectacular piece of software, and an absolute steal at four dollars. https://www.wallpaperengine.io/en

And just a few days ago, the latest release just added the ability to display cover art and song titles. https://i.imgur.com/OyIVvXQ.jpg

It's supposed to work with most media players, but I have not succeeded in making it work with MC. I looked through the FAQ, and it mentions the following:
https://help.wallpaperengine.io/en/audio/mediaintegration.html#enabling-album-cover-media-data-feature

Most modern media players support the Windows media overlay that is needed for this feature to function. Sometimes you need to enable it first. Open the settings of your media player and look for the appropriate option (sometimes also hidden away in the advanced settings). The option usually mentions a "media overlay" or "media hotkeys". If you are unsure, do a web search including the name of your media player and words like "media overlay".

I played around with the various MC settings related to hotkeys in the options, but nothing really seems to fit the suggestion above, nor did my experimenting make any difference. Any chance this "media overlay" referenced above can be updated/added to MC so it works with MC Matt?  There appears to be a good bit of interest in improving MC's visualization capabilities. This might be worth looking into. Thank you in advance.

[toddelving]

Thanks for all the replies. I also contacted Windows and they said that Soundspectrum is not Compatible with Windows 11

I finally got a msg back from Soundspectrum regarding the fix.
Thanks so much for reaching out. Can you let me know if this is an issue with the standalone application, or with a media player plugin? I would appreciate if you can walk me through step by step exactly what you are experiencing.

We realize there are some issues with the current visualizers on Windows 11. We don't support Win11 at this time, but I went ahead and extended all your previous licenses through 2023-11-02 so you can continue to access downloads from us if needed.

Hey programmers at JRiver we would love high quality visualizations and I am sure would pay a little bit more for that service. Keep on rocking in the free world

[marko]

This is basically what Soundspectrum did for me around a year and a ½ ago, when I sadly, discovered quite a serious issue with their MC plugin...
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,128741.0.html.

Honestly, as far as I'm concerned, Soundspectrum, with MC at least, is dead.

Also, FWIW, my HTPC is Windows 11, and there, used only as a full screen audio visualiser, it works just fine, so far....

Personally, I would love if JRiver would pick up the Milkdrop plugin, fix it up and make it part of MC by default.

[eve]

What's the market even like for visualizers? We keep talking about SoundSpectrum (man I remember how promising they seemed when I was a kid, I'm pretty sure I still have licenses somewhere) but is there really no other company making serious visualizers for consumers?

That's just so uniquely interesting to me.

I guess people do music visualization with lights now too so that surely cuts into the market a bit.
I've played with that on and off, but it's not nearly as satisfying as it should be. I've often considered trying to go back into messing around with that but I was never blown away (and my place is 100% smart RGB lighting, despite almost never using the color capabilities). Zigbee or Wifi really start to show their limits when doing 'real time' control on a bunch of devices, that should have 'some' degree of synchronous behavior. The ways around it are typically hardware controllers built into the individual 'devices' with built in mics or MAYBE a line in.... Not great, not great at all.
Nanoleafs at one point (terrible brand, very overpriced and the software is HORRIBLE) had a DMX controller which seemed quite promising. I don't know if anyone actually bought it though.

Wired WLED controllers might overcome some of these issues tbh. We've been sleeping on the WLED stuff... ordered it when I was in an 'oh more smart lighting would be cool' mood and then abandoned the project because, like how often do we even use colored lighting? Do I really care that the soft light from under the couch is animated?