(Unofficial) Aurora Synesthesia

[Chronicle112]

i was also wondering, just an idea, what if u could make synesthesia that it would monitor all the output audio in windows, so when i listen for example to a song on youtube without a video i still have ambx from the music or so that when i play a song in wmp i dont have to go to now playing all the time and i can stay in the music library

this would be so awesome

[DeltaBlast]

Ehh.. that's what it does already...

[npcartwright]

lol ye it already does that

[Razunter]

Best app ever... But need more features. Hotkeys for switching modes for example.

[Zodius]

i was also wondering, just an idea, what if u could make synesthesia that it would monitor all the output audio in windows, so when i listen for example to a song on youtube without a video i still have ambx from the music or so that when i play a song in wmp i dont have to go to now playing all the time and i can stay in the music library

this would be so awesome

As DeltaBlast and npcartwright have rightly said, Synesthesia already does this, and was its whole purpose for being created, to allow any music played through your computer to produce lighting effects. I suggest you have a play around with your favourite music videos.

Best app ever... But need more features. Hotkeys for switching modes for example.

I am glad that so many people are enjoying it . Consider hotkeys on the list of improvements to do.

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2. Icon sharing with "illuminate" (one icon - one menue)

I know I've already replied to this, but this comment got me thinking about amBX Illuminate, and how it won't work while Aurora Synesthesia is operational (one has to take priority over the other). As some people may prefer to have statically changing lights, but be able to use AS all the time as a single amBX controlling tool, i've spent this evening adding my very own version of Illuminate into the program .

This gives the same effect as amBX Illuminate, but as a mode under the Aurora menu. There are three presets available under the new "Illumination Preset" menu that i've based off popular amBX Illuminate profiles, these being Original (What amBX Illuminate's default is), Rainbow (pretty self explanitory), and Candle (which is using the Candle02 profile created by escase).

Due the the way AS operates, some transitions between colours aren't as smooth as Illuminate, but with AS I have the ability to mix in sound-to-light effects. This can only be done though when you select two specific modes. See, during my testing of Aurora and Synesthesia I've found certain combinations of settings to produce visual results that I am personally not happy with. This is why the Immersive Synesthesia mode deactivates Aurora, yet the other combinations are rather pleasent. This is true with Illuminate Aurora, but rather than the effect not being good, virtually no sound-to-light visuals come through at all, so I have Aurora switch Synesthesia off when that happens.

Don't fear, this doesn't mean that you can't get sound-to-light effects on top of illuminate. To achieve this you need both Aurora and Synesthesia to be in what I call their "exclusive" modes (i've changed the menu slightly to make this more obvious). So Immersive Synesthesia can't work with Average or Vibrant Aurora, and Illuminate Aurora can't work with Ambient and Reactive Synesthesia, but Illuminate Aurora + Immersive Synesthesia does work.
I know i've probably not explained it all too well, but without resorting to a diagram its the best I can do.


My intent with this feature isn't to replace amBX illuminate as I think thats a great little tool that gives good effects, but at the same time I'm the developer of Aurora Synesthesia, and want it to be as full featured and useful as possible. In its current state Illuminate Aurora is no substitue for the real illuminate as there are no custom preset options for either this or the sound-to-light visualisations, but when that day comes I hope it will satisfy a lot of people.


Please continue to provide your comments and suggestions, and I hope you all like the idea of adding this feature. I know its not the fix for Aero, but it has only took one evening to get working so its staying .

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[qupie]

Hi, I love this program but I have a couple of questions.

Although it works in win 7 (yeah ) the sound part does not. and it also brings up a little tikking sound sometimes in the music/movie
The aurora effect is nice, but can it be smoother? because you really see the steps the light makes. it is like a big step every fer ms. And also, it is pretty slow, but that might be my settings or computer? because I love what you are doing, but the fact it is slow and not really smooth makes me wonder wheather this can't be better or it might be my setings..

By the way, hi everybody here ik just bought my set last week from Ibood and I love it behind my plasma tv

p.s. I dont really get the part with stereo mix etc... where is that option? and I have a digital out to my receiver is that a problem? can I still sent DTS and Dolby signals to my receiver when I set it to stereo mix ?

thanx again!
bye

[Pio]

Hi, I bought it last week from iBood as well (it's a shame noone knows it as I also didn't before).
And AS is probably a great piece of software! It's really good to see this tool growing
But at the moment Aurora is pretty much useless for me because of Aero (Win7), but I know you're working on it and for testing it's fine

The integration of illuminate would be great, as they couln't interfere anymore

@qupie: maybe this will help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5qa-HODWbc
Don't know about your other question.

BTW: I had a problem that the stereo mix didn't find any sounds. It could be solved in the Realtek Control Panel-Device advanced settings-seperate all input jacks...

The music is very nice. I'm having the same problem with the changing volume in stereo mix with the master volume, but I consider this as fixed with the adaptive setting - great!

But in Synesthesia I can see that it reacts about half a second later than the music. Can this delay be shortened? Especially for music the rhythm is quit important and now its shifted...

A simple "disable all" in the context menu would be good. It saved the setting and you don't have to exit the programm.

Thanks, Pio

[Zodius]

Hi, I love this program but I have a couple of questions.

Although it works in win 7 (yeah ) the sound part does not. and it also brings up a little tikking sound sometimes in the music/movie.

The aurora effect is nice, but can it be smoother? because you really see the steps the light makes. it is like a big step every fer ms. And also, it is pretty slow, but that might be my settings or computer? because I love what you are doing, but the fact it is slow and not really smooth makes me wonder wheather this can't be better or it might be my setings.

As Pio has mentioned, you need to set up stereo-mix as that is what Synesthesia uses to produce effects, which the majority of computers have.

Regarding the ticking sound, and lack of smoothness with Aurora, my immediate guess is that your computer isn't powerful enough to run it (I could be wrong). See AS updates every 100ms so is just at the edge of human perception; I did previously have it at 50ms but found this to cause headaches when viewing flashing images, as your whole room would flash. The fact that you are seeing the lights change suggests that something on your computer is slowing it down to take more than 100ms to update. This may be some background program, or perhaps the amBX service itself, in which case there isn't much that can be done until new drivers are released.

Another alternative is that Win7 Aero isn't getting switched off when you use Aurora, as there is a know problem with this causing noticable delays.

Either way, could you please check all this as I know Aurora Synesthesia performs well on the majority of peoples machines. Also the spec of your computer would be useful if you have that information.

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And AS is probably a great piece of software! It's really good to see this tool growing
But at the moment Aurora is pretty much useless for me because of Aero (Win7), but I know you're working on it and for testing it's fine

The integration of illuminate would be great, as they couln't interfere anymore

As I probably mentioned before, this mode isn't intended to replace illuminate as that program works great and has a lot of options that AS won't support, but at least people don't have to go without illuminate effects, or have to continually switch between the programs.

BTW: I had a problem that the stereo mix didn't find any sounds. It could be solved in the Realtek Control Panel-Device advanced settings-seperate all input jacks...

The music is very nice. I'm having the same problem with the changing volume in stereo mix with the master volume, but I consider this as fixed with the adaptive setting - great!

But in Synesthesia I can see that it reacts about half a second later than the music. Can this delay be shortened? Especially for music the rhythm is quit important and now its shifted...

So far I've only encountered one person (out of the 80 or so who appear to have downloaded AS) who doesn't have stereo-mix at all on their computer, but that seems to be a driver issue. He could still get effects from a microphone .

I'm glad that the adaptive setting is doing its job, but I'm still surprised as to why different computers act like this. Nevermind though, at least Synesthesia now works for more people than before.

As for the delay with Synesthesia mode, i'm afraid I can't do anything about that, as music needs to play before the system can pick it up. If I make the delay smaller eventually a problem is reached where it tries to process sound before it has finished hearing it, giving unpleasent results. Half a second is the best I can offer at this time.

A simple "disable all" in the context menu would be good. It saved the setting and you don't have to exit the programm.

Consider it added The option is now just above the exit button. This sets Aurora and Synesthesia into disable modes, so if you want effects back, you have to go into their menus.

Keep the comments and feedback coming in
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[Chronicle112]

ow xd i feel pretty stupid right now xD lets see how it works cause untill now i only got lightings when i used my microfone

[Chronicle112]

ow i see now, i didnt enable stereo mix properly

[Zodius]

Yea, its kind of important that you set the stereo-mix up correctly. I'm just wondering, as I know you can set the recording channel to be a microphone, has anybody had the urge to try karaoke with this program yet?


Over 100 downloads of 1.05! And i'm guessing it works great for the majority of people.


Just one note of caution. I've discovered (through the help of an observant user) that if you are running Vista or Win7 without Aero enabled, the Aurora mode fails to work. This is due to an oversight on my part.

If people are experiencing this problem then please PM me with your email address, as I need a few people with these operating systems to help me resolve this as I only have an XP machine. If you have found the opposite of this then please also get in touch as the more information I can get about how this behaves the better.


As a bonus to anybody who is able to help me, you'll recieve the latest version of Aurora Synesthesia before anybody else, featuring the new Illuminate mode .

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[stanni]

First of all: thank you for this AMAZING little app
this really gives color to my pc and without this we wouldn't be able to enjoy the full power of ambx.

I didn't quite get how to use the light effects with music, I have that stereo mix enabled, do I have to do anything else? (I'm talking about my usb headset, that may be the reason why it doesn't work?)

and another question: I don't get an user interface except for the options I can choose with a right click on the Aurora Synesthesia icon. Is that normal?

besides that I look forward for the Aero support...

I'm using Win 7 x64 RTM btw.

you're doing a great job, thank you!

[Zodius]

First of all: thank you for this AMAZING little app
this really gives color to my pc and without this we wouldn't be able to enjoy the full power of ambx.

No problem at all. Its great to see loads of people liking Aurora Synesthesia.

I didn't quite get how to use the light effects with music, I have that stereo mix enabled, do I have to do anything else? (I'm talking about my usb headset, that may be the reason why it doesn't work?)

It is generally different from computer to computer (and version of windows) so I can't really give a definative guide to setting it up. If the lights react to music in the Immersive Synesthesia mode then you've set stereo-mix up correctly and don't need to do anything else. If not then I recommend you do a bit of research on how to "enable stereo-mix in Windows 7".

and another question: I don't get an user interface except for the options I can choose with a right click on the Aurora Synesthesia icon. Is that normal?

Yep, that is normal. Aurora Synesthesia doesn't have a lot of features so there isn't really a need for a user interface, as all the options are accessable via the tray icon in one or two clicks.

The only time I will consider adding a user interface is when I want to offer options to create and manage custom presets.

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[stanni]

well, the music thing worked! I just had to put it in immersive mode :p I see that I can use the immersive mode even with aero on, that's splendid!

too bad that aurora uses so much resources in-game, I tried it with the game "the last remnant" and the effects were absolutely great! but framerate drops too much.

thank you for your quick reply, can't thank you enough for your great work on this!

[Zodius]

Thats great news! Although you can switch Synesthesia into a different mode to get it working at the same time as Aurora.

The fact that Aurora works with games is a great bonus, but that is not what it's meant for, and is also the reason why the games frame-rate drops so much. If "the last remnant" is a game not supported by the current amBX software, then its great to hear that Aurora works with it, but I will alway recommend the amBX FX Gen over Aurora anyday when it comes to gaming.

Speaking of it working with games, has anybody else tried it with QuakeLive or other web games? And if so what are your thoughts?

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