Imaginando 'VS - Visual Synthesizer': An Audio-Visual App/Plugin, bringing The Power to Generate Captivating Graphics from Your Music in an Easy and Intuitive Way
Imaginando 'VS - Visual Synthesizer': An Audio-Visual App/Plugin, bringing The Power to Generate Captivating Graphics from Your Music in an Easy and Intuitive Way
Imaginando 'VS - Visual Synthesizer': An Audio-Visual App/Plugin, bringing The Power to Generate Captivating Graphics from Your Music in an Easy and Intuitive Way
'VS - Visual Synthesizer' is an audio-visual app/plugin, bringing the power to generate captivating graphics from your music in an easy and intuitive way. It was initially released in June 2021 by Imaginando, the Portugal-based creative music technology company. VS provides an easy and intuitive way to create visuals that react to both audio and MIDI. Consisting of a collection of shader based materials and multi-layer rendering engine, VS is much more than just a traditional music visualization tool. VS presents a new approach to visualization, featuring deep customization and control options, VS lets you use both audio and MIDI to drive your artistic creations.
VS uses dynamic 'materials', a variety of different graphical elements, from glowing particle effects to warping geometric planes, each with its own set of attributes. These materials can be layered on top of each other, then triggered and manipulated by modulating their parameters, providing an interactive way to create complex compositions. Using MIDI, VS can be played just like a regular synth, including polyphony. Each VS layer can draw multiple instances of its material simultaneously based on MIDI input. So a triad chord, for example, would generate three visual voices, which could be from recorded MIDI data or live input from a MIDI keyboard, allowing you to play VS like a traditional synthesizer. VS' extensive parameter and modulation functionality provides the flexibility to create highly customizable visuals with complete control. You can use any combination of LFOs, envelope generators, audio-reactive modulators and MIDI data to transform your creations.
From experienced VS artists to musicians and producers new to the world of visualization, VS makes it easy to create complex layered animations, and explore new ways to express your music visually. VS is available as a standalone app on Windows 10, MacOS and iOS, plus VST/AU/AUv3 plugin formats. This allows users to run VS right inside both desktop and mobile DAWs alike. So you can easily integrate VS into your workflow and create visuals right at the heart of your musical projects, for instant interaction with music and MIDI.
VS is an additive synthesizer in which oscillators do not produce sound, but visuals. These oscillators are called 'materials'. Just like an audio oscillator will produce a distinct sound, a material produces a unique visual output. A material can have one or more parameters that can alter its characteristics. Materials are loaded into layers. A layer is a polyphonic synthesis engine which means that the same material can be played by multiple voices. Different voices have different characteristics and this could affect particularities of a material assigned to a layer, resulting in increased expressiveness. Layers play an important role in VS, as you can stack them in order to create your visual composition. In VS there are 8 layers. Additionally there is a background layer with special characteristics.
The Layer Manager allows you to select layers, load materials via the material browser and set the Z index (stacking order) of the layers. There are 8 numbered material layers, plus one background layer. The background layer can use either a video or image file. Each layer item has a live preview of its current material. Layers are rendered in a stack; the leftmost layer is top, and the very bottom layer is the background layer on the right.
The Layer Controls panel provides access to the parameters of the currently selected layer. The number of controls that appear for each layer varies depending on the layer's active material, specifically the amount of custom parameters the material contains. When a layer is selected, the available controls automatically change. Each material can have up to 8 parameters that are specific to it.
The Layer Modulations panel is divided into three sections: LFO, EG and Audio Modulator. On the left of the panel is the LFO section. LFO is an acronym for Low Frequency Oscillator, and is usually used to modulate audio signals like frequency, volume, etc. Here in VS, LFO is applied to the materials/layers parameters. You can, for instance, take the x position of a given material and modulate it with an LFO, so its position is changed over time. On the middle of the panel is the EG section. EG is an acronym for envelope generator. In audio terms, the envelope generator shapes the sound amplitude over time. Envelope generators usually have four stages: Attack, decay, sustain and release. VS streamlines the envelope generator process by requiring just the attack and release parameters. Here in VS, Attack controls the amount of time the brightness will take from zero to its layer defined value once a trigger on event is received, and Release controls the amount of time the brightness will take from its sustain value to zero once a trigger off event is received. Finally, on the right of the panel is the Audio Modulator section. Here in VS, it is possible to use the input audio as a modulation source, just like the LFOs and EGs. There are four independent audio modulators with two modes of operation - GATE and SPCTRM. In GATE mode, audio input will serve as a modulator only if its amplitude is above a specific level, defined by the Threshold parameter. The SPCTRM (Spectrum) mode is very similar to the GATE mode, but with the advantage of the audio being divided into frequency bands. Instead of reading the amplitude of the signal as a whole, you can choose a specific band of frequencies to serve as a modulation source.
The Modulation Matrix panel lets you assign modulation sources to specific layer parameters, arranged in two dimensional grid of cells, with modulation sources on the x axis (top) and parameters on the y axis (left). Clicking a cell value and then dragging either up/down or left/right will decrease or increase the amount of modulation effect that the source will have on the parameter. In addition to the LFO, EG and Audio Modulator modulation sources, a further two sources are available for MIDI note data trigger based modulation - KBD and VEL. KBD (Keyboard) is the amount of modulation determined by the pitch of the note on events, and VEL (Velocity) is the amount of modulation determined by the velocity of the MIDI note on events.
Features
8 Polyphonic visual layers
4 voices per layer
50 built-in materials
1 background layer with solid color/image/video (no modulations)
4 LFO's
2 EG's
4 Dual-mode audio input as modulators (peak and band)
Built-in video recording feature
Syphon (Mac OS)
Spout (Windows) output
NDI output
Factory Bank with 35 presets
System Requirements
Mac OS
Mac OS 10.13 or higher
Compatible with 64Bit host DAW which supports VST and AU plugin format
Minimum 500MB of free disk space is required to install
Product license activation requires internet connection
Windows
Windows 10 or higher
Compatible with 64Bit host DAW which supports VST plugin format
Minimum 350MB of free disk space is required to install
Product license activation requires internet connection
iOS
iOS 12.1 or higher
At least 650MB of free space required
Price
VS for desktop (Windows / macOS)
One-time purchase: €69 EUR (This 30%-off price applies until December 31th, 2023)
Rent-to-own: €9.99 per month x 12 months
VS for iOS
€21.99 EUR
* An unlimited-time demo is available: here (For desktop version of VS only)
(The demo version does not support for 'save' and 'load' functions.)
Imaginando is a creative music technology company based in Braga, Portugal. Founded by Nuno Santos in 2014, it continues to develop innovative applications and tools for musicians, based on its philosophy of "combining music with technology to create inspiring musical experiences".
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