Vibralizer v0.5 is all about making the Vibes yours. In every Vibe, you can now adjust the speed of time, choose from a library of curated color palettes, and layer on filters like ASCII art and trippy mirror effects. The two new Vibes in this release, Phase and Waveform, actually make use of some filters by default. You can access all of these new features – Speed, Colors, and Filters – from any Vibe with a new set of buttons in the bottom left corner.

And that’s not all. This is our biggest update ever, so let’s dig in!

Go Your Speed

When we create each Vibe, we shape the audio signal into visuals in a number of ways, adjusting things like the “attack” and “decay” of the signal, which essentially amounts to how fast or gentle a Vibe might feel. We like to think everything comes out of the Vibe kitchen properly seasoned, but maybe you want to add some salt and pepper.

A swirling S-shaped spiral of fiery orange and white streaks radiating from a bright center on a black background. A speed slider set to 1.50x is open in the lower left, and a now playing panel in the lower right shows "Islands" by HABITAAT.

Adjusting the Speed of a Vibe actually adjusts how fast time flows, but not the speed at which the audio signal is processed. What does that even mean? We honestly weren’t too sure ourselves, but once we realized it was technically possible, we were very curious to see what it looked like. The results were interesting enough that we thought you might want to play with time, too.

Turn the Speed on any Vibe down for a gentler, ethereal feel. Or, turn it up if you want something more twitchy and reactive. Like a timey-wimey time travel movie plot, it’s a little hard to explain, so give it a try and let us know what you think!

Color Any Vibe

Colors lets you drop a new palette onto any Vibe. For instance, we made the Fire Vibe with a holiday fire in mind, but we never said which holiday. Switch to witchy colors and release your inner Halloween goblin!

A color palette picker open in the lower left, its grid of swatches recoloring the scene behind it so the flames burn acid green and white above charred logs and rocky ground under a starry sky. The now playing panel in the lower right shows "This Is Halloween" by The Citizens of Halloween.

We’ve been wanting to add the ability to change colors since we first started, and many of you requested this feature, too. But what does it mean to change colors in a Vibe, exactly? We’ve been slow to design this because we didn’t want to simply tint the whole screen or shift the hues. At the same time, we also didn’t want to go too far in the other direction: Deep customization comes at the cost of a more complex interface and increased mental load. That didn’t feel like the right approach when our goal with colors was to make something you could quickly switch at a party or use with a gamepad from the couch (gamepad support is coming!) while still making a clearly visible impact.

What we came up with is a design system where color palettes are thoughtfully applied to each Vibe in whatever way they use color already. To create this, we started by faithfully translating each Vibe’s current colors into a palette that it would use by default. That way, when a new set of colors is applied, each color in the palette has a place it will go.

Some Vibes use a lot of colors from each palette, and some use a few or just one. Colors only apply to the Vibe you’re currently viewing and, when you go to select colors, the palettes will automatically trim themselves to the same number of colors that the Vibe uses.

40 curated palettes: neon, pastel, moody, and monochrome, with more on the way.
Every Vibe reads Colors in its own way, so the same palette feels custom-fit to each scene, whether it’s the particles of Stargate, the magma flow of Corona, or the rings of, well, Ring.
Colors are set per-Vibe, so each scene remembers its own look.
Hit the Reset button to switch any Vibe back to its original palette.

Remix with Filters

Filters are visual effects that sit on top of whatever Vibe you’re playing. Twist the Galaxy Vibe into a black hole with swirly distortions, or turn the Spectrogram Vibe into retro ASCII art. You stack multiple filters at a time and adjust the intensity of each one. The order of the stack matters, too. Applying the filters Swirl, Kaleidoscope, and Ripple is going to look different than if you went Ripple, Swirl, and then Kaleidoscope! Similar to the Speed feature, it makes sense when you play around with it. Try adding filters, adjusting their intensity with the sliders, and changing their order by dragging and dropping them. We can’t wait to see what combinations you’ll come up with!

A scene transformed by a stack of visual effects into a pink, teal, and cream psychedelic pinwheel spiraling out from the center of the frame. The filters panel in the lower left shows Lens, Ripple, Swirl, and Kaleidoscope active with strength sliders, next to a list of further options including Mirror Horizontal, Mirror Vertical, ASCII, Glitch, and CRT. The now playing panel shows "Ripple - 2013 Remaster" by Grateful Dead.

9 Filters to start, including ASCII art and Mirror (horizontal and vertical), with more on the way in future updates.
Every Filter has a strength slider, so you can go from a subtle touch to full-on transformation.
Once filters are applied, drag and drop to change the order of the stack.

Try this: Open the Kaleidoscope Vibe and turn off the Kaleidoscope filter to see what’s going on back there! Or, try using the Kaleidoscope filter on any other Vibe.

Two New Vibes: Phase and Waveform

Many of you requested “simple” Vibes like equalizers, waveforms, and oscilloscopes, similar to the existing Spectrogram Vibe. We wanted to see more of these, too. They’re the most direct representation of the audio data, and when combined with filters and colors, you can create some pretty wildly different looks.

Phase

Phase creates glowing shapes that are representative of the audio data’s structure, pausing to highlight key energetic moments as the audio data moves through time, almost like a lightning strike. We paired this with several new filters to create a look that helps to highlight these shapes, but you can customize it in a number of ways by using a different filter stack than the default.

A large looping spiral drawn entirely out of glowing teal letters, numbers, and symbols on a nearly black background, with dense knots of characters clustered along its path. The track title "Wook Whistle" by CloZee and its album art appear in the lower right.

Sidenote: This screenshot also shows a new (Windows only) feature where you can see the media info – track title, artist, and album art – without showing the whole interface. By default, this will show any time the track changes (which you can turn off in Settings). And if you want, there is also another option to show the media info all the time (off by default). We’ve been enjoying leaving it on so we know what’s playing!

Waveform

Waveform is a clean, classic amplitude wave over time that attenuates at the edge of its history. We simply mirrored this horizontally so that the newest shapes come from the center and radiate outward. Same as Phase (and any other Vibe), we encourage you to play with filters and colors on this to create a look that you enjoy.

A tall black sound wave silhouette mirrored above and below the center line, spanning the full width of a plain off-white background.

Delightful by Default

A lot of music visualizers have a zillion presets, knobs, and dials. And we love that for people that want to leave no stone unturned. But we think that everyone should have the opportunity to express themselves without being overwhelmed by complexity. We aim to build tools that offer a surprisingly deep creative space wrapped in an approachable interface. At the same time, we also care about minimizing interface clutter for people that won’t ever touch Vibe customization and just want to put something on that looks good. Both approaches are totally valid and we will continue supporting both.

v0.5.0 Release Notes

Features & Updates

Speed: Adjust the rate at which time moves forward
Colors: Apply any of 40 built-in palettes to any Vibe
Filters: 9 new stackable effects with per-Filter strength sliders
Two new Vibes: Phase and Waveform, bringing the library to 11.
Refreshed interface with higher contrast colors, animations, and a reorganized Settings menu.
(Windows Only) Track, title, and album art will now show automatically when the song changes. This is on by default, but you can turn it off in Settings.
(Windows Only) Track, title, and album art can now be shown on screen at all times. This is off by default, but you can turn it on in Settings.
The selected Audio Source in Settings now automatically follows your system’s default output when you switch devices.

Bug Fixes & Performance Improvements

General

Completely rebuilt user interface from the ground up. The outside looks similar, but the code is totally different. This will help enable much faster updates moving forward.
Vibes now animate smoothly on 60Hz and other standard-refresh displays instead of appearing strobey.
Fullscreen now uses your display’s native resolution, with cursor and menu fixes in fullscreen mode.
Fixed an issue where the app could display text incorrectly for users whose system language/region wasn’t US English.

macOS

Fixed a startup freeze that could occur when granting system audio permission.

Privacy & Data

Turning off Data Collection now stops immediately instead of waiting until the next launch.
The first-run safety and terms screen can now be read in full before accepting, and declined.
Deleting analytics data now gives feedback on success and failure.
An opt-out now persists reliably, including after an unexpected shutdown.
Clearer consent around crash and error reports, and data-deletion requests now complete reliably with feedback.

We’re already hard at work on what’s next: more Filters, more Vibes, and more ways to make Vibralizer yours. The roadmap is shaped by what you tell us in the Steam Community, on Discord, on socials, and in your reviews.

Sending you good Vibes,

Kate & Nick <3

Blog

Remix the Vibes with Speed, Colors, and Filters!