My Problem With (Most) Spectrograms

Spectrum Reassignment articles:

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[skybreakedm]

I love that wave candy is in the bottom left corner just dunking on these inferior ones the whole video 🤣😅

[zweizweidreizweidreinull]

Hey, audio plug-in dev here! I'm currently working on a plug-in UI component library and I'll definitely check out how spectrum reassignment is implemented. I've always wondered how the really clean spectrum analyzers and spectrograms that retain so much detail in the bass frequencies work. Thanks for this awesome video!

[RaquelFoster]

I'm a developer and I've done a lot of signal processing work. Reassignment is not a secret, and neither are the tradeoffs. It's doing multiple DFTs and using the phase derivative to estimate the frequency. It takes a lot more CPU, and all those estimations turn into error when you add harmonics or multiple sinusoids. It totally falls apart vs. white noise. But if you want a sharp spectrogram of a monosynth, definitely use reassignment. Spectrograms are kinda like compressors. Everybody just wants them to work, but dialing them in is very situational.

[MrBillsTunes]

"today i'm not gonna do a tutorial"
*does a tutorial*

[jenbanim]

5:25 this is actually quite literally the uncertainty principle. In quantum mechanics, the position of a particle is related to the momentum of that particle by a fourier transform, just like how an audio file's waveform is related to its spectogram. The tradeoff between frequency resolution and time resolution in these VSTs exists for exacty the same reason that there is a tradeoff between knowing where a particle is and how fast it's going in our universe

[JakeFoster]

Shoutout to Direct for creating MiniMeters! Amazing producer

[robiaster]

Just a note, Image-Line didn't discontinue the VSTs to restrict people to FL Studio, but because we couldn't justify the maintenance effort required for them. All of the VSTs had significant bugs which took ages to get fixed, because the 2 devs who could work on them were Miro, who does all of the UI stuff, and Frederic, who is the lead dev for FL Studio.

The plugins made barely any money compared to Fl Studio and we didn't want to continue selling something broken at the time.

IL has stated on multiple occasions that they were planning to re-introduce the VST plugins, but they just never have.

I hope they might someday. Especially if it enables compatibility with the DAW project format or importing into Bitwig in future or something.


I fully agree with the sentiment though.

[Derpcat]

its about time more people start to give a shit bout the spectrogram standards, Wavecandy is ahead of the curve, seems like a pattern with Image Lines plugins, they always been ahead of the curve, insane stuff!

[ethanlkelly]

I rarely comment on videos, but as a musician, mathematician, DSP lover, and general fan of your videos, this information has been too absolutely mind-blowing to NOT leave a comment. I'm definitely going to check out minimeters ASAP! Love your music and can't thank you enough for the awesome videos!

[filipenicoli_]

For those interested, the FFT groups ranges of frequencies inside "bins" (basicaly ranges) and those bins are linearly spaced in frequency. Since when dealing with frequencies we tend to use log scales, you're basically zooming in at low frequencies and what you see there is "pixelated". You'll have the same amount of bins between 0-1kHz and 10-11kHz. Increasing the FFT size increases the amount of bins and thus the "resolution" improves, but the FFT size is correlated with the amount of samples the FFT uses.

[dwnetwrok]

I use Wave Candy on my default template. Glad to see someone showing the love it deserves

[DJPastaYaY]

Interesting to hear this. You don't see many videos covering this topic!

[deadpixel]

Honestly the person who coded Wave Candy (Didier Dambrin aka "Gol") is just a Savant, so I'm not surprised to see it here. I mean all the major FL Plugins were coded by him; Sytrus, Maximus, Harmor, etc. It's a shame he's no longer really involved with the company, but they are still delivering solid content.

[glenfoxh]

The hype for things can be unforgivable, once you find the truly good stuff. It's like some developers, have no idea that we have eyes of our own, to see what is good or not for ourselves. They merely wish we didn't, so their hype talk would work as well as they hope it will.

It's frustrating at times to see.

Thank you for showing us the truly good stuff.

[EvgenyPetukhovMusic]

Brilliant explanation and research, thanks a lot! I was looking for a good spectrogram without buying a separate DAW

[zesterfrost_music]

The frustration in finding a good spectrogram is so relatable. Like you realise how valuable simple and powerful plugins like Wave candy and Harmor are once you switch to a different DAW.
As always, thanks for the valuable insight Austin.🙌

[xtrullor]

Really weird how long I've been sleeping on Wave Candy even though I've known about it for ages. Never knew how good it actually was, just took it for granted.

[nathanempty]

This is an EXCELLENT video. this has always driven me nuts and I have never known there was a better alternative until JUST now. THANK YOU

[jeff-meyer]

@Au5 if you have any interest, i threw together a really simple M4L device which will hide the IL Wave Candy vst when the Hint/Info box isn't showing. This way it automatically goes away and gets out of the way when you are scrolling through the library and such on the left side of the screen. It only appears when the bottom "Devices/Midi/Audio" area is visible, which is when the Hint/Info box is visible.

[niccolomedici]

0:19 they're actually 3d graphs (as seen in the 1'st image in the wikipedia article you linked to). The 3'rd dimension is the color (or its intensity, if it's monochrome).