Ask HN: What's the point of audio waveform visualization?

[dqpb]

When playing audio, iPhone 14 displays the waveform on the dynamic island. It looks neat, but it got me thinking - why is this ever visualized outside of audio editing software? Is it just art? Does anyone actually get any information from it? What's the point?

[dqpb]

To answer my own question, it does indicate that something is playing, even of the audio is turned off, which is useful.

I guess I'm wondering if anyone can "read" waveforms, or if there's some other usefulness to it.

[necovek → dqpb]

You can see the underlying beat: it doesn't really require any special skill I think (though I haven't seen the iPhone waveforms).

[dqpb → necovek]

I was staring at it while listening to a podcast trying to see if I could make out individual words. I couldn't.

[necovek → dqpb]

Yeah, human speech is probably not the best usecase for waveform visualization.

[necovek]

It's not exactly art, but similar to a vumeter, you get an artifical "dancer" on your screen: just like watching other people dance (in rhythm), it activates your visual metronome and gets you more engaged with music.

If the above sounds convincing, bear in mind that I am just thinking aloud, and I have no idea if any of the above translates to other people, let alone that this might be the reason music is ever visualized like this for playback.

[h2odragon]

It can be art, but in most contexts it's a low information progress bar type "give the user something to watch" measure.

[stuxnet79 → h2odragon]

> It can be art

A fact that's been exploited by artists like Venetian Snares [1] and Aphex Twin [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHup81lEjqo

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSYAZnQmffg

Say what you will about "IDM" but the whole genre / movement enabled quite a bit of creative expression and range. I'd be hard pressed to see tracks like these being included in albums in any other context.

[h2odragon → stuxnet79]

I'll also submit that eXtace (remember that one?) is art. Surely there's other "pretty picture from audio" generators that count too.

[eimrine]

I do not know what is displaying on iphone, but I love seing a spectre (Fourier transform) on log scale while listening to music.