Comments on: Reader Feedback: iTunes Visualization as Desktop?

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 03 May 2007 06:42:59 +0000

Thanks Gerald for the SoundFlower tip! Using SoundFlower to route the iTunes output to the G-Force Screen Saver (part of G-Force Platinum) and OnyX to display the screen saver on the desktop, I have the much-sought-after desktop visualizer! And I must say, it is _awesome_!

It would be easiest to use Backlight to put the screen saver on the desktop, but (AFAIK) Backlight is PowerPC-only and I wanted a native solution. By naming the G-Force screensaver “Flurry.saver” and putting it in /System/Library/Screen Savers/ I was able to pick Flurry under OnyX’s Parameters->General and start that going as the desktop. I also needed a little trick to make the screen saver respond to audio input, mainly setting the audio input for G-Force Standalone (press Shift-A until the Soundflower input is chosen) and then copying the A_in parameter from the Standalone preferences into the screen saver preferences.

Sorry for being so long-winded, I hope that wasn’t all too confusing, but the results are just insanely great. The only problem is that using Exposé for all windows shows the desktop picture underneath, but hey, I can’t complain!

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 19:56:56 +0000

What if you were to pipe the iTunes output into the aggregated input, then use that to run SoundStream (or whatever you decide to use). You’d have to write a component for SoundStream (either inside if you can, or around it if you can’t get in there) that pipes the music back to the regular speakers.

By: Gerald Buckley

Gerald Buckley — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:25:18 +0000

Could you use something like SoundFlower Bed to pipe the output? Just a thought… Haven’t tried it myself. Have a plane ride coming Friday night. Might be a good diversion for me (a bad one for my seat mate tho).

By: Yasser Dahab

Yasser Dahab — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:31:11 +0000

This doesn’t help at all, but Backlight can also throw your screen saver into the background. Just not a QC screen saver. Doesn’t help the mic thing either, so I guess this is kind of a worthless comment.

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 04:00:23 +0000

You’re gonna leave us hanging with only one line Dave? We need the whole thing!

By: Phil

Phil — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 16:38:43 +0000

I am not a big fan of music visualization, but I think it could be very cool on the desktop.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 09:13:18 +0000

Oh, now that would just be mean. I wouldn’t submit any one to the torture of my singing voice. The visualizer would have to be a Simpsons sing-along or something to entice me to do that. “When I was seventeen I had a very good beeeer”

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 03:20:43 +0000

Well you see, if you have earphones on, you just sing outloud at ridiculously high volume so that Sound Stream or your own QC ‘app’ can respond! The people around you should understand.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 23:43:11 +0000

I love Quartz Composer. But it IS irritating that there is no way to plug the sound output from iTunes directly into QC without going through the mic. What if you have earphones on? Though I’m sure some enterprising person could code a solution.

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 22:48:41 +0000

Oh man. It’s lucky for me that I can blame that on the end of a long week… I typed it three times thinking, “this doesn’t look right!”

thanks, editing now.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 22:29:32 +0000

I believe you mean “Voila!” instead of “Walah!” I knew that college French course would come in handy some day.