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Ask HN: What's the point of audio waveform visualization?

3 points by dqpb ↗ HN
When playing audio, iPhone 14 displays the waveform on the dynamic island. It looks neat, but it got me thinking - why is this ever visualized outside of audio editing software? Is it just art? Does anyone actually get any information from it? What's the point?

9 comments

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dqpb
To answer my own question, it does indicate that something is playing, even of the audio is turned off, which is useful.

I guess I'm wondering if anyone can "read" waveforms, or if there's some other usefulness to it.

necovek
You can see the underlying beat: it doesn't really require any special skill I think (though I haven't seen the iPhone waveforms).
dqpb
I was staring at it while listening to a podcast trying to see if I could make out individual words. I couldn't.
necovek
Yeah, human speech is probably not the best usecase for waveform visualization.
eimrine
I do not know what is displaying on iphone, but I love seing a spectre (Fourier transform) on log scale while listening to music.
necovek
It's not exactly art, but similar to a vumeter, you get an artifical "dancer" on your screen: just like watching other people dance (in rhythm), it activates your visual metronome and gets you more engaged with music.

If the above sounds convincing, bear in mind that I am just thinking aloud, and I have no idea if any of the above translates to other people, let alone that this might be the reason music is ever visualized like this for playback.

h2odragon
It can be art, but in most contexts it's a low information progress bar type "give the user something to watch" measure.
stuxnet79
> It can be art

A fact that's been exploited by artists like Venetian Snares [1] and Aphex Twin [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHup81lEjqo

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSYAZnQmffg

Say what you will about "IDM" but the whole genre / movement enabled quite a bit of creative expression and range. I'd be hard pressed to see tracks like these being included in albums in any other context.

h2odragon
I'll also submit that eXtace (remember that one?) is art. Surely there's other "pretty picture from audio" generators that count too.