

Show HN: SoundViz – Your favorite sound as beautiful art - tylerdavis
https://www.soundviz.com

======
tylerdavis
Hey Hacker News,

I'm Tyler, one of the Co-Founders of SoundViz. Thanks for taking the time to
check out SoundViz. We're very excited to get your feedback, so please don't
hold back!

~~~
anigbrowl
As an audio professional, I just find this strange - rather as if I offered to
turn your favorite picture into a record you could listen to whenever you want
on high quality vinyl (all of which end up sounding very similar:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwyQtdEMFJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwyQtdEMFJc)).

I'm curious to see whether there is a market for this, but I already spend so
much of my time looking at waveforms I'm not sure I want to look at more. Have
you considered spectrograms or spectral phase diagrams, both of which can be
considerably more visually interesting than a straight waveform?

~~~
tylerdavis
You're not wrong. I wanted to focus on one implementation first, given the
challenges, but I'd like to go the spectral phase route next.

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tpbstats
This is OK Computer by Radiohead with the sprinkled donut theme:
[http://i.imgur.com/whVq5uE.png](http://i.imgur.com/whVq5uE.png)

Feedback:

\- Overall really nice interface

\- At first the messages you get while waiting for the wave are really nice,
but then they get slightly annoying. Some kind of indicator of how long it
takes would be better. Processing time was acceptable.

\- Frankly I think the visualisation is uninteresting. I am not interested in
having this hanging on the wall. I tried a wide variety of settings, but it
remained uninteresting due to the basic form of the sound wave.

\- Tried the record option afterwards. The wave was a little more interesting,
and I preferred that experience much more. I would like to be able to play
back the sound I recorded and listen to it while I can see the progress on the
sound wave.

~~~
tylerdavis
First of all, thank you for the feedback.

Agreed on messaging/processing indicator.

The size of the bars is based on the amplitude of the sound you're processing,
so your results will vary, depending on the dynamics of the sound. Have you
tried In Rainbows? ;)

Recording - You are correct. I think a count down would also be useful.
Currently, the recording starts as soon as you hit the button, which can
produce some silence at the beginning of the recording if you're not on it. I
like the playback idea a lot, though.

Thanks again!

~~~
tpbstats
Tried a few different tunes, found Violence by Andy Stott to be the most
interesting due to the intense dynamics of the track:
[http://i.imgur.com/YYFBxBN.png](http://i.imgur.com/YYFBxBN.png)

A little more feedback:

\- It bothers me that I can't make the bars completely square (the most square
setting has a slight roundness to it).

\- Maybe an option for designing a custom palette would be interesting. Maybe
importing one from
[http://www.colourlovers.com/](http://www.colourlovers.com/) or a similar
service could be an option.

\- A free download as desktop background option would be a nice touch. Free
advertising.

~~~
tylerdavis
Can you send me the draft id? hello@soundviz.com

~~~
tpbstats
Arr, I don't think I have it sorry. I'm not registered. Tried to go back in
browser history, but that doesn't seem to work.

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thatswrong0
So it's basically the SoundCloud song visualizer, flipped across the x-axis,
colored by amplitude, and printed for me. I feel like the visuals need quite a
bit more "wow!" to make that worth it to me.

------
b6
Please consider partnering with Fracture! I have no affiliation with them, I'm
just a big fan and live in the same city.

[https://www.fractureme.com/](https://www.fractureme.com/)

~~~
tylerdavis
Oh yeah, that would be awesome. Thanks for pointing them out.

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tbirdz
In addition to the time domain visualization I would be interested in a
frequency domain visualization as well. Spectrum Analysis plots can look very
beautiful especially with a well chosen color scheme.

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mfkp
Would be nice to have a slider to adjust the vertical height of the bars (I
want to squish the whole thing down a bit, so it takes up less vertical
space).

Anyway, very slick interface, looking good!

~~~
tylerdavis
Thanks! I definitely think that would make sense.

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pavel_lishin
Heads up: Ghostery prevents typekit from loading by default, which completely
blocks anything from rendering on the landing page.

~~~
tylerdavis
Oh wow. Good to know. Thank you.

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lukasm
Is there a demo somewhere? I don't have a mp3.

~~~
tylerdavis
Unfortunately, we don't have any demos yet, but it's something that has come
up, so we're planning on it. Do you have a microphone?

If not, if you sign up, I can create a draft for you so you can play around.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Might be nice if we could specify an external file, or a YouTube video,
instead of uploading or recording a sound.

~~~
tylerdavis
This has come up a lot. There's some potential legal implications that have
prevented us from pursuing this.

