Flashforward Boston: Sound Visualization Using Flash
Rough Draft Notes
Jared Ficklin, frog design
Want to flatten learning curve, inspire with examples, remove barriers to entry, expose enabling technologies.
Sounds visualization: it is fun, enhance experience, increase usability
What is sound visualization. Standard visualization partial effects, are cool but you can do so much more. vectors and drawing, time line, interaction, sound engine, cell animation, rich media.
Sound is vibration. Author of flame sound visualization (Ruben Tube). Net result is what we consider digital music.
Sound terminology: wave length, period, amplitude, pitch, tone.
To visual: need sound and data. Sounds is easy, data has been hard. imported data: picture of the future. Marmalade FlashAmp.
frogDB WMP sound visual
native data: microphone object, SoundChannel.leftPeak & SoundChannel.rightPeak, SoundMixer.computerSpectrum(). In client and can be called dynamically.
active_mic.activityLevel (version 6 and above) between 1- 100.
SoundChannel: version 9, value between 0-1. current amplitude.
SoundMixer: version 9. 512 value byte array. waveform or FFT frequency and sampling rate. -1 to 1 waveform or 0 to 2 for frequency. 256 left next 256 right.
Be concerned about security. Security.allowDomain("*");
With the frequency output, there will be holes. bass 50-80Hz. vocals 200Hz-1000Khz. Snare. 10000 KHz to 30000KHz.
Need to think about frequency to make good sound visualization.
Multipliers, segmenting, and averaging to make the data useful.
50Hz per array value
Data stacked to the low end since that is what we hear most. Need to average samples on the high end and stretch out the lower end data to see real data.
Tactics:
direct interpolation: manipulate property, frame manipulation,
threshold spawning: values measured against a threshold
algorithmic spawning: funnest one: values processed and measured against rules
interaction: have user setup basis for visualization
self assembling music video