foo_vis_spectrum_analyzer is a foobar2000 component that started as a spectrum analyzer panel.
It is an attempt to recreate the foo_musical_spectrum component by fismineur and the Audio Spectrum project for foobar2000 64-bit.
Over time other visualisations were added.
Click the image above to view the gallery.
- Spectrum Analyzer (Bars, Curve, Radial Bars, Radial Curve), Spectrogram, Peak / RMS, Balance / Correlation, Oscilloscope and Bit Meter visualizations.
- Fast Fourier (FFT), Constant-Q (CQT), Sliding Windowed Infinite Fourier (SWIFT) and Analog-style transforms
- Multiple frequency range and smoothing options
- Multiple stacked or overlapping graphs
- Styling of all visual elements
- Artwork background and color extraction
- DirectX rendering.
- Supports the Default User Interface (DUI) and the Columns User Interface (CUI).
- Supports dark mode.
- Supports foobar2000 2.0 and later (32 and 64-bit version).
- Tested on foobar2000 v2.0 or later (32 or 64-bit).
- Tested on Microsoft Windows 10 and later.
- Tested with Columns UI 2.1.0.
- Double-click
foo_vis_spectrum_analyzer.fbk2-component.
or
- Import
foo_vis_spectrum_analyzer.fbk2-componentinto foobar2000 using the "File / Preferences / Components / Install..." menu item.
You can find the user guide here.
To build the code you need:
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2026 Community Edition or later
- foobar2000 SDK 2025-03-07
- Windows Template Library (WTL) 10.0.10320
- Columns UI SDK 8.0.0
The following libraries are included in the repository:
To create the deployment package you need:
- PowerShell 7.2 or later
Create the following directory structure:
3rdParty
columns_ui-sdk
WTL10_10320
bin
bin.x86
foo_vis_spectrum_analyzer
int
out
sdk
3rdParty\columns_ui-sdkcontains the Columns UI SDK 7.0.0.3rdParty\WTL10_10320contains WTL 10.0.10320.bincontains a portable version of foobar2000 64-bit for debugging purposes.bin.x86contains a portable version of foobar2000 32-bit for debugging purposes.foo_vis_spectrum_analyzercontains the Git repository.
intreceives the intermedidiate files of the build.
outreceives a deployable version of the component.sdkcontains the foobar2000 SDK.
Open foo_vis_spectrum_analyzer.sln with Visual Studio and build the solution.
To create the component first build the x86 configuration and next the x64 configuration.
v0.12.0.0, 2026-09-11
- New: You can downmix the input of the oscilloscope to mono.
- New: Turbo and a couple of Perceptually Uniform Sequential Matplotlib color maps.
- New: Mel scale frequency distribution.
- New: A spectrogram color legend can be enabled in the configuration dialog.
- New: Lanczos and 4-term Blackman-Harris window function.
- The latter produces very clean peaks with minimal leakage from strong tones into neighboring bins.
- New: Option to render the window function and weighing function over the spectrum.
- Only useful to see the shape of both functions.
- New: Zero-crossing trigger for the oscilloscope. Best used with non-music signals such as those generated by foo_input_signal.
- Improved: Visualizations continue without interruption when starting a new track.
- Improved: Performance and numeric stability of the CQT transform.
- Improved: Downsampling of the oscilloscope input should now retain more peak values and produce better representation of large input audio chunks.
- Improved: Tweaked the behavior of the visualizations when changing tracks. They no longer fully reset.
- Improved: Overall code hardening and cleanup.
- Improved: Optimized the FFT analyzer and improved all coefficient mapping modes.
- Improved: Cleaned up the rough edges of the spectrogram.
- Improved: Minor redesign of the Graphs page to make the spectrogram easier to configure.
- Left/Right and Top/Bottom axis should be more consistent for a horizontal or vertical spectrogram.
- Changed: Peak values continue to animate when the parent window is minimized.
- Changed: Made the CPU/GPU use optimization logic less invasive when the visualization is hidden or minimized to react more predictable to track changes and the end of a playlist.
- Changed: Component group on the Common settings page is now called Diagnostics.
- Breaking Change: The peak hold time and fall rate (was Acceleration) are now expressed in seconds and dB/s respectively to make them independent of the frame rate. The old values will be remapped to the new ranges but some tweaking may be necessary.
- Breaking Change: Multiple graphs used to imply the use of local styles. By default global styles will be used unless you enable the setting
Use local styleon theGraphspage. - Fixed: Peak mode configuration was disabled for the Peak / RMS meter.
- Fixed: Minor regressions caused by the introduction of local styles.
- Fixed: Triangular Filter Bank (TFB) coefficient mapping. This mapping will always use frequencies generated using the Mel scale.
You can read the full history here.
- Peter Pawlowski for the foobar2000 audio player.
- TF3RDL for the advice, the help and his:
- Project Nayuki
- Holger Stenger for foo_vis_oscilloscope.
- fismineur for foo_musical_spectrum that inspired this component.
- Oleg V. Polikarpotchkin and Peter Lee for their Bezier Spline article.
- Bedapisl for Fast ColorThief.
- Niels Lohmann for JSON for Modern C++.
- Anton Mikhailov for the Turbo color map.
- Matplotlib for the Perceptually Uniform Sequential color maps.
- The Audio Frequency Spectrum Explained
- Fast Fourier Transformation FFT - Basics
- Sine Tone Generator
- A440
- Constant-Q transform
- Mel-frequency cepstrum
- Mel scale
- Sliding windowed infinite Fourier transform
- Home page: https://github.com/stuerp/foo_vis_spectrum_analyzer
- Repository: https://github.com/stuerp/foo_vis_spectrum_analyzer.git
- Issue tracker: https://github.com/stuerp/foo_vis_spectrum_analyzer/issues
- Support: https://hydrogenaudio.org/index.php/topic,125031.0.html.
