I also attempted to do real-time audio visualizations with LED strips. What was unsatisfying is that the net effect always seemed to be: the thing would light up with heavy beats and general volume. But otherwise the visual didn't FEEL like the music. This is the same issue I always had with the Winamp visualizations back in the day.
To solve this I tried pre-processing the audio, which only works with recordings obviously. I extract the beats and the chords (using Chordify). I made a basic animation and pulsed the lights to the beat, and mapped the chords to different color palettes.
Some friends and I rushed it to put it together as a Burning Man art project and it wasn't perfect, but by the time we launched it felt a lot closer to what I'd imagined. Here's a grainy video of it working at Burning Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXVZhv_Xi0I
It works pretty well with most songs that you pick. Just saying there's another way to go somewhere between (1) fully reactive to live audio, and (2) hand designed animations.
I don't think there's an easy bridge to make it work with live audio though unfortunately.
Agreed. As engineers we build context every time we interact with the codebase. LLMs don't do that.
A good senior engineer has a ton in their head after 6+ months in a codebase. You can spend a lot of time trying to equip Claude Code with the equivalent in the form of CLAUDE.MD, references to docs, etc., but it's a lot of work, and it's not clear that the agents even use it well (yet).
Another factor with the vibes being off (at least in the US): mass outsourcing of jobs thanks to remote work. You used to have to be a multinational company with global entities and offices. Now you can be a 10-person startup with half your people outside the country.
When the world went remote many folks were happy with the better work-life balance. But it means that we compete in a ruthless global labor market.
That's why companies rejecting remote work is good for the American worker in some ways.
To solve this I tried pre-processing the audio, which only works with recordings obviously. I extract the beats and the chords (using Chordify). I made a basic animation and pulsed the lights to the beat, and mapped the chords to different color palettes.
Some friends and I rushed it to put it together as a Burning Man art project and it wasn't perfect, but by the time we launched it felt a lot closer to what I'd imagined. Here's a grainy video of it working at Burning Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXVZhv_Xi0I
It works pretty well with most songs that you pick. Just saying there's another way to go somewhere between (1) fully reactive to live audio, and (2) hand designed animations.
I don't think there's an easy bridge to make it work with live audio though unfortunately.