Photosounder Spiral CM now out and about

[Numanoid]

"See your sounds like never before with this radically innovative visualisation tool for PC and Mac" runs the ad.

I guess it is a cut down version of the Photosounder plugin: http://www.kvraudio.com/product/photoso ... otosounder

[chuck death]

I think it might be something entirely different from Photosounder (Photosounder is the company name as well as the name of one of the products). Photosounder is a standalone sound generating tool, this sounds like a visualisation plugin.

To me, it sounds more like it might be something like the visualisation part of Photosounder's SplineEQ. Lots of people asked him to create a plugin with just the visualisation part when he launched SplineEQ so it kind of fits that he might do this for a Magware plugin.

Having said that, I have no insider knowledge, I'm just saying how it reads to me! It'll probably end up being something else entirely!

[mcnelson]

Looks like this:


NMG

[Shabdahbriah]

Looks like this:


NMG

[Neon Breath]

Numanoid, where did you grab that news exactly?

[VariKusBrainZ]

Didnt Crysonic threaten to release a plugin with graphical feedback like that one above

[Numanoid]

Numanoid, where did you grab that news exactly?

In the current issue of Computer Music, there is an announcement for the next issue that will carry this plugin.

[A_SN]

Numanoid, where did you grab that news exactly?

In the current issue of Computer Music, there is an announcement for the next issue that will carry this plugin.

I had no idea they did that lol, I guess that explains why they weren't letting me get out of doing it for the August issue (because I still haven't finished the non-CM version, I kinda did it backwards, I finished the CM version before really starting on the commercial version). I only just googled "Spiral CM" and found this thread because I assumed no one would have heard of it until a few days ago.

To me, it sounds more like it might be something like the visualisation part of Photosounder's SplineEQ. Lots of people asked him to create a plugin with just the visualisation part when he launched SplineEQ so it kind of fits that he might do this for a Magware plugin.

Yeah SpiralCM is basically SplineEQ's visualisation wound into a spiral, though I did it not because of popular demand but because I wanted to learn music. Last year when I started this basically I didn't know any music at all, now I know a whole bunch of tunes (which I play on my all thirds-tuned guitar) from just letting the Spiral thing run while I listen to music and staring at it for hours . So yeah, my own education is the main reason I did it, but I also succeeded at creating a generator of passive entertainment, this thing's better than TV.

There's more to just that to the upcoming full version, basically SpiralCM does the basic job of displaying the notes, the commercial version adds things to make it easier to figure out what's going like most notably stereo pan colouring to tell instruments apart (and also cause it's really pretty, see gif below), but also the ability to replay/freeze a recorded segment to analyse in detail (and the ability to time-stretch that to hear what you're looking at, although I haven't implemented that yet), adjustable resolution (which makes it pretty great for tuning an instrument), a mouse-controlled overlay to figure harmonics out (also not implemented yet, oops), more visualisation controls like gamma, or a way to remove/isolate based on stereo pan (helps focus on an instrument).

The magazine's coming out tomorrow and I haven't even added demo limitations, and I don't even have a webpage for it, tomorrow's gonna be a long day

[jethrobull]

This looks cool! I have SplineEQ and also have a subscription to CM so....

[Tricky-Loops]

Can it really substitute my TV?

[chk071]

Can it really substitute my TV?

Yes, much better program.

[A_SN]

Can it really substitute my TV?

Depends, but I can tell you that my programming is much better than CNN's programming

[Kenit]

Now I got it.
It's the harmonic visualisation tool.
This gives insight into the melodic content of your synth parts and samples.

[A_SN]

Now I got it.
It's the harmonic visualisation tool.
This gives insight into the melodic content of your synth parts and samples.

Yeah it does that too. The whole spiral thing is meant to make you understand almost instantly not only what notes there are but also how each visible harmonic belongs with each other as most harmonics stack up into visible "branches" to form a recognisable shape. That's the big difference with a visualiser like SplineEQ's where you can see it all but it's hard to tell which note is playing or which harmonic you're looking at.

But unusually enough for a plugin I made this thing not to use on your own creations as much as to use on other peoples music for you to learn what's going on in there musically, with their synthesis or processing or even just the nature of their instruments sound (with Spiral you can see how each instrument looks like, whether its harmonics shake around like strings or Hammonds might do, whether you can mostly see the lowest harmonics like a flute or a piano or the higher harmonics like a saxophone or a clavichord, or all harmonics like a sawtooth, or whether notes glissando between each other like many synths do or are bent or slided like on a guitar) but also see and learn about the mixing and mostly as with the full version learn about stereo mixing.

So that's why I just load it into something like SAVIHost and feed it the computer's "stereo mix", there's a lot to learn that way.

[Numanoid]

Can it really substitute my TV?

Depends, but I can tell you that my programming is much better than CNN's programming

+1 No doubt

I have now added the CM mag to my CM vault and have download the plugin, will check it out after work today