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 .rsyn for native archival/presentation exchange or as .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 through a universal BGFX renderer backend across desktop platforms. To run this project, make sure cmake is installed, and clone the repository with submodules so the local third-party dependencies are available:

# 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.