I make music for therapeutic reasons. I’ve found that immersive visualisations and lights help with this a lot. I’ve already bought a couple of rack-mount spectrum analysers and they are awesome.
Do you know of other devices that provide a similar visual experience? I know there are a bunch of cheap bouncing led bars on ali express and the likes but there is a problem: They work based on microphones. I need to be able to plug them in because I use headphones most of the time.
I know it is kind of niche but any pointers would be appreciated.
I’m interested too but I can’t think of anything outside of DMX setups.
The only thing that isn’t good enough to be a good suggestion are the Logitech G560 speakers. You could technically plug them in, mute them, and have them react to the audio. But it’s just RGB flashing mostly.
Yeah that’s why I posted the question here. My request seems to be in some kind of niche valley. On the budget side you have these devices with mics that work fine unless you’re using headphones and on the other end of the spectrum there is DMX which looks amazing (because pro) but isn’t “automatic” since you want to program them for live shows.
If I can’t find anything I will probably invest the time and build something custom like @[email protected] suggested.
I ve just found an interesting video on youtube. Maybe the most comprehensive ESP32 video so far. I think it is worth watching. He got all codes shared on his github. Links in the description.
Oh yeah his videos are always interesting. For now I’ve decided to go with a small DMX setup because of its super low latency.
plz share details
I haven’t made all the decisions yet but my goal is to have a multi-sensory experience while making music in headphones. Meaning I don’t need a professional light show nor do I want to spend much time programming lights.
What I am thinking now is I will build a Raspberry Pi based video synth to throw nice visuals on a spare monitor. Then if I want to invest some more I will get a roland vc-1-dmx to convert the raspberry pi hdmi signal to a dmx universe to connect some LED tubes around the studio.
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Eyesy looks interesting but the pricing like most things C&G seems off to me. I picked a DMX setup with 2 bright multi-channel LED bars which come out to around 280 bucks total so I think I will be going that route (and learning aother popular live performance tech).
search on youtube for this: rapsberry pi LED
Yeah I know how to make this myself but I figured purpose-built hardware would be more convenient (and probably be less expensive).
do you want led strip or array?
It doesn’t really matter. I am looking for options.
If I’d make one myself I will probably go with an Arduino and WS2813 based strip in a frosted tube or something. But I would prefer to not have to invest too much time. I’ve worked on a raspberry pi solution before but it was finicky because of the lack of real-time options. And Arduino is cheaper.
well, Im interested in this so I looked around for some industrial grade stuff (no cheap Chinese that burns off after 10 minutes)
PixelGate: https://entertainment.sundrax.com/products/pixelgate-board
DMX interface: https://www.gear4music.com/PA-DJ-and-Lighting/Enttec-Open-DMX-USB-Interface/2YZZ?_gl=1*1076dii*_up*MQ…_gaMjA2NzY2MTQ4Mi4xNjg4ODEwMzE2*_ga_0WF1R5QW3K*MTY4ODgxMDMxNi4xLjAuMTY4ODgxMDMxNi4wLjAuMA…
DMX software: https://www.qlcplus.org/
what do you think?
Hm, dmx could be useful if I could find some kind of audio to dmx or midi to dmx converter. Then I could set up routing in Ableton using followers and the likes. I will investigate that route further. Thanks.
https://www.qlcplus.org/use_case.php
the very first use case
I’ve found this: https://www.theimpersonalstereo.com/dmax From the docs it seems that it would allow me to map any Ableton parameter to dmx channels. So all I would need is a dmx interface and lights.
Not sure how you’d pipe external audio into these, but it might be worth looking at visualizers on PC. Stuff like milkdrop, or whatever format Winamp used to use.
I hadn’t considered additional displays until @[email protected] and you mentioned solutions like that. Good idea and worth exploring.
For now I think I have settled on DMX as it is expandable in the future. I will just need to figure out the audio or midi to DMX situation. But that’s just software I can run on my DAW pc.
