Synesthesia

Synesthesia is an application designed to provide a real-time visualisation of audio frequencies as colour. Done through an artistic, physics-inspired process mapping our audible frequency range to the visible spectrum of colours.

Synesthesia features two modes of visualisation, one being "ReSyne", allowing you to import audio files (WAV/FLAC/OGG/MP3), visualise the entire song as a gradient (constructed via our mapping process), and export as a .tiff for external editing in applications like Photoshop (allowing for intuitive effects: blacking out w/ shapes -> eq, blur -> reverb). We can also export (our gradient + colour) as a video file on macOS hosts.

Installation

Synesthesia is automatically built by GitHub Actions, you can download the application from the Releases page.

Manual Building & Running

Synesthesia runs on Windows (DirectX 12) and macOS (Metal). To run this project, make sure cmake is installed, and just clone this repository with submodules (we build app dependencies locally):

# Clone the repository with submodules
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/jcckg/synesthesia
cd synesthesia

# Create (and enter) the build directory
mkdir build && cd build

# Configure and build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

# Run Synesthesia
./synesthesia

Building an App Bundle on macOS

In order to build a macOS Application Bundle, we use the following flags (-DBUILD_MACOS_BUNDLE) to enable our app-building option:

cmake .. -DBUILD_MACOS_BUNDLE=ON
cmake --build .

And your .app will be in the root of the build directory.

Building an Executable on Windows

Note: For Windows clients, you must install VS Microsoft C++ Build Tools, here is a guide for installing and setting up your PATH.

To build a standalone/portable Windows executable, we use the following flags (-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release) to build:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build . --config Release

Your executable will then be placed in the Release folder (placed at the root of your build directory).

Credits & Footnotes

• GUI built with Dear ImGui
• FFT made possible with KissFFT

⚠️ Warning:
This application can display rapidly changing colours when multiple frequencies are played. If you have photosensitive epilepsy, I strongly advise against using this application.

Note: This application is artistic in nature, and doesn't aim to replicate Synesthesia (Chromesthesia) or either be 100%-scientifically accurate.