I Finally Found a Good Retro Music Visualizer App
Every once in a while, my seemingly pointless question about computers becomes an obsession. This week the question is: “What happened to music visualizers? And can I use them?
In the 2000s, one of the coolest things you could do on a computer was turn on the music, turn on the visualizer—a kind of psychedelic animation that responded to the music—and walk out into space. What about these days? Well, Apple Music still has the visualizer that iTunes offered back in the day—just click Window > Visualizer in the menu bar to open it. But Apple is alone in this. Spotify, the most popular streaming service, does not have any visualizer – only a full-screen mode with a photo of the artist. Amazon Music and YouTube Music also have nothing.
You might think that my research should have stopped there. You are wrong. We had something amazing and we lost it. This is unacceptable. This missing feature has been stuck in my head to the point of obsession, causing countless searches when I should be working on something else.
I eventually found the unfortunate name of MilkyMilky , a free app for Windows, Mac and Linux that brings back the famous Milkdrop renderer that Winamp was famous for. Even better: it works with any sound on your computer, meaning any application that produces sound is supported.
To get started, download the application and launch it. The visualizer will launch immediately, but a pop-up window will appear describing suggested keyboard shortcuts.
You can use the arrow keys to switch between different animations. You can also open settings by pressing Ctrl+S . From here you can specify which audio source to use and tweak the graphics a bit. If you want, you can even change the audio source to the microphone; sing or play an instrument and the visualizer will respond.
There’s a slight catch for Mac users, mostly related to permissions: macOS doesn’t allow apps to track the audio currently playing. MilkyMilky solves this problem by using a microphone, which isn’t exactly ideal, but it works. You can work around this issue by using the Loopback app, which can turn your system audio into a virtual microphone. (It’s up to you to decide whether it’s overkill to just use Milkdrop.)
This instrument works best with songs that have a distinct rhythm or bassline so you can see the impact on each beat. Ideally it should be something a little trippy. I really enjoyed playing Magdalena Bay’s latest album – it fits really well. However, if your tastes are less modern, you probably can’t go wrong with Pink Floyd.
I had a lot of fun leaving this running in the background on weekdays and I hope you enjoy it too. Mostly I’m glad I can stop obsessively researching it.