Visualizer and Milkdrop

Listen draws a live picture of the music. The built-in visualizer is a spectrum analyzer with the same options as Feishin’s (audioMotion). On Linux you can switch to Milkdrop, which draws animated presets through libprojectM.

Where it appears

• Full-screen player: the Visualizer tab. The Expand visualizer button there fills the whole window; Esc or Shrink visualizer goes back. See Full-screen player.
• Right sidebar: a strip under the queue. It is on by default. Turn it on or off with Visualizer panel in Settings → Playback → Player sidebar panels (or Visualizer in queue in the Player options popover). You can also combine it with the lyrics panel and change the panel order there.
• The player bar’s Visualizer button opens the full-screen player on the visualizer tab.

While the visualizer is not on screen, Listen does not capture or analyse audio.

What it listens to

The visualizer analyses the audio Listen itself plays. On Linux it records Listen’s own playback streams through PipeWire (pw-record and pw-dump must be installed, which they are with a standard PipeWire setup). Other programs and the AI DJ’s voice are not included, and the volume slider does not change the picture. On Windows it uses a loopback of the default output device, so it shows whatever that device plays, which includes other programs.

If the capture fails, the panel shows the reason instead of a picture. The visualizer shows nothing while you cast or use the server jukebox, because Listen’s own audio is silent then.

Spectrum options

Open Settings → Playback, find the Visualizer section and press Configure… next to Visualizer settings. The dialog Visualizer settings has the options below. Their names and ranges follow Feishin and audioMotion, and the dialog changes the picture live.

Presets. Select Preset picks a saved set of options. Four presets (Preset 1 to 4) come with Listen. To keep your own, type a name under Preset Name and press Save as Preset; Delete removes one of yours. Copy Configuration puts the current options on the clipboard as JSON and Paste Configuration applies options from the clipboard, so you can share setups with other Listen or Feishin users. Reset to default at the bottom restores the defaults (your saved presets stay).

General

Colors: Color Mode (Gradient, Bar-Index, Bar-Level), Gradient (built-in gradients and your own), and for dual layouts Gradient Left, Gradient Right and Split Gradient.

FFT: FFT Size (1024 to 32768; default 16384) and Smoothing (0 to 0.95).

Frequency range and scaling: Minimum Frequency (20 to 50 Hz), Maximum Frequency (8000 to 22050 Hz) and Frequency Scale (Log, Linear, Bark, Mel).

Sensitivity: Weighting Filter (None, A, B, C, D, Z), Minimum Decibels (-120 to -60), Maximum Decibels (-40 to 0), Linear Amplitude with Linear Boost, and Volume (input gain, 0 to 4).

Peak behavior: Show Peaks (bar modes) or Peak Line (graph mode), Fade Peaks, Gravity, Peak Fade Time (ms) and Peak Hold Time (ms).

Radial spectrum: Radial, and with it Radial Invert, Spin Speed (-3 to 3 rpm) and Radius.

Reflex: Reflex Ratio, Reflex Alpha, Reflex Brightness, Reflex Fit and Mirror (Left, Off, Right).

Miscellaneous: for bar modes LED Bars (with True LEDs), Alpha Bars, Lumi Bars, Outline Bars, Round Bars, and Low Resolution (mode 0) or ANSI Bands; and for all modes Show Scale X, Note Labels, Show Scale Y and Show FPS.

Custom gradients. Under Custom Gradients, press Add Custom Gradient, name it, choose Vertical or Horizontal, and add colours as #rrggbb values with Add Color. Copy and Paste Gradient move a gradient through the clipboard. Your gradients then appear in the gradient choices.

Milkdrop (Linux)

Milkdrop is the classic music-visualizer format. Listen draws .milk presets with projectM. It is available on Linux only. Listen does not include projectM or any presets, so you need two things:

1. libprojectM version 4 installed on your computer. Listen loads it when it starts; it is not needed to build or run Listen otherwise. Listen looks for libprojectM-4.so.4 in the system library paths, in /usr/lib64, and in /usr/local/lib64 and /usr/local/lib (where a build from source installs it).
2. Milkdrop presets (.milk files) in a folder. By default that is presets inside the milkdrop folder of Listen’s data folder (on Linux ~/.local/share/listen/milkdrop/presets). Subfolders up to eight levels deep are read, so you can unpack a preset pack there as it comes. A different folder can be set in the settings.

To use it:

1. Open Settings → Playback → Milkdrop. If libprojectM is missing, the row says “Milkdrop needs libprojectM 4” and the button stays disabled.
2. Set Visualizer type to Milkdrop. The queue strip and the full-screen visualizer now show Milkdrop.
3. Choose your folder in Preset folder (Browse…) and press Rescan after adding files. The row shows how many presets were found.

If the folder has no .milk files, the picture area says so and names the folder.

Milkdrop renders on a hidden OpenGL context at 960 by 540 pixels and scales the picture to the available space. It draws from the same audio capture as the spectrum.