What an audio visualizer does
An audio visualizer listens to sound and draws it. Many times a second it splits the signal into frequency bands, measures how loud each band is, and hands those numbers to whatever is drawing the picture. Bass, mids and treble become height, colour, speed or shape. The history and the mechanics are on the what is a music visualizer page; this one is about using one on your own audio.
Search for a sound visualizer and you land on the same tools. The name changes with what you feed it: a song, a podcast clip, a beat, a voice memo.
Two kinds: spectrum bars and generative scenes
Spectrum and waveform visualizers draw the measurement itself. A spectrum is a row of bars, one per frequency band, rising and falling with the level. A waveform is the line of the signal over time. Both are clear and quick to read, and both look much the same from one track to the next, since the picture is the data.
Generative visualizers draw a scene from a small program and let the audio change the program. The scene has its own motion, and the sound bends it: a kick folds the geometry, a bright hi-hat shifts the colour, a quiet passage lets it drift. Two tracks played through the same preset come out as two different videos.
Why Groovalizer’s are generative
Groovalizer runs projectM, the open-source successor to Winamp’s MilkDrop, compiled to WebAssembly so it plays in a browser tab. Each of the 2,100+ presets is a scene written in equations: feedback fractals, liquid geometry, folding symmetry, star fields. Every frame the engine measures bass, mids and treble and passes them into those equations.
Under Adjust, three controls change how a look takes the sound: how strongly it reacts to the music, its speed, and its colour. Search the library by name, or press Surprise me and let it pick.
Any audio file, online
The Studio takes MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG or AAC files. Drag one in and it starts playing with a look on screen; there is nothing to download and no account needed to watch. For sound in the room, a DJ set or a band, Live mode listens to a microphone or an audio interface and runs fullscreen on a projector or TV.
The picture and any video you export are drawn on your own machine by your graphics card, so a long render takes as long as your hardware takes.
Make a video with it
Here is the short version.
- Open the Studio and drop in your audio file.
- Play it and pick a look. Change looks while the track runs until one fits.
- Press Make your video. Choose the shape (16:9 for YouTube, 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, 1:1 or 4:5 for a feed), 30 or 60 frames per second, and the whole song or one part of it.
- The video renders in your browser and downloads as a file you can upload straight to the platform.
The full walkthrough, with what each setting does, is on how to make a music visualizer video.
Free to watch, free to export at 720p
Playing any preset on any file is free, for as long as you like. Sign in free and a video file downloads at 720p, any length, with a small groovalizer.space watermark. A clean video is $4.99 on its own, up to 1080p and 10 minutes, or Pro makes them at $14.99 a month or $144 a year. Bought videos and Pro exports carry no watermark.