Audio interactivity

Make your Smode compositions reactive to audio streams

Smode offers the possibility of extracting information from an audio stream (either an external input, a sound file played from Smode, or even from anywhere in windows, if your audio drivers allow it).

That makes having an audio-reactive Compo possible, a perfect tool for VJing and audio reactive installations. Go see the Link part of the documentation for further details.

Setup an audio input

The first thing you’ll need to do is to setup your audio input. To do that, go into the Preferences (F11) > Engine > Audio Input.

In that section, you will be able to define your input from the drop-down menu in the Value column. That can either be a microphone, a line-in on your sound card, or a Stereo mix (the output of your speakers / line out as an input).

The devices listed here are your Recording Devices in windows, and are configurable by right clicking your audio notification icon (bottom-right corner), and clicking Recording devices.

Alternatively, you can go to the Control Panel > Sound > Recording.

Once your audio device is selected in Smode, you can press Apply Changes in the preferences. After that, you should see your audio device in the Devices tab (in the bottom-left part of the main window).

If the device works correctly, the audio curve should move and react accordingly to your input.

Link a variable to an audio extractor

The next few steps are very simple. First, you should select the variable you want to be audio reactive. This can range from the opacity of a layer, its size or position, the strength of a modifier, to more complicated variables like the position or speed of playback of an animation or video. Those can virtually be any animatable variable in Smode.

In this topic, we will chose the height of a simple uniform layer we just created.

You can then redefine the extraction zone by moving the green bars with your mouse, horizontal being the frequency range, and vertical the amplitude range.

You can also add a Smooth modifier on your link to have a less chaotic movement. This command will create an new Link in your Link bank (see the topic on ), of type Audio Spectrum.

Going further - Display an audio curve directly in your Compo

This is possible with the Audio function. Like other functions, it can be used in a mask or modifier.

Tutorials

Audio Interactivity:

Audio reactive Speaker: