Photosounder has released Spiral, a music analysis plugin for Mac OS X and Windows.
Spiral is a fresh take on spectral analysis focused on allowing you to see and understand music and the notes that make it up instantly. This is achieved mainly by coiling the spectrum into a spiral framed by a chromatic circle, thus allowing you to instantly see what's happening musically and spectrally.
Several other factors help you see better what you're listening to:
- The colours represent position in the stereo mix which means that quite often instruments have their own colour.
- Portions of the sound can be recorded in Spiral's memory and then played back at a much slower rate (between 0% and 100%). This is quite necessary and handy when writing down notes or analysing chords.
- Analysis resolution can be adjusted. You'll want to lower it when analysis notes played very fast as it gives you more precision in time, and increase it when analysing complex chords, bass instruments or when tuning an instrument.
- The spiral visualisation can be rotated so that you may have the root of the scale on top and thus be able to recognise notes more readily.
- By clicking on the visualisation you can create overlays that represent the harmonics for a given note. Adjusting those overlays can greatly help you in identifying the individual notes that make up a chord.
Spiral is available on both Windows and Mac OS X, in VST and AU format, in 32 and 64-bits.
Price: $99.