Skip to content
RENDERWAVERENDERWAVE

How Audio Reactivity Works

Once you have the mental model, RENDERWAVE audio reactivity makes sense. This page covers what the app measures, how that movement reaches your visuals, and where to watch it happen.

The core idea

Section titled “The core idea”

RENDERWAVE listens to the incoming audio and measures features of the sound many times a second: overall loudness, how much energy sits in different frequency ranges, sharp transient hits, and the beat. Those measurements are numbers between 0 and 1.

You point one of those measurements at a control. Assign the bass energy to a shader’s Scale parameter, and the bass value drives that parameter. Louder bass, bigger scale. Sound comes in, the app measures it, the parameter moves, the visuals change.

Two things have to be true for anything to react:

  1. Reactivity is on. Audio capture is a switch you turn on under Settings, and it does not start by itself. See Audio input.
  2. Audio is assigned to at least one parameter. Reactivity is opt-in per control. A control with nothing assigned to it never moves on its own, even with music playing.

Assignments you get for free

Section titled “Assignments you get for free”

Many visuals ship with audio already wired up, so they react the moment you turn reactivity on. Each visual gets built-in assignments suited to it, and you can keep them, adjust them, or remove them.

To see how many controls a visual drives by audio, check the count badge on the Audio section in the creator panel. A badge of three means three parameters are currently taking audio.

Change anything the visual ships, and add your own. See Per-parameter modulation.

Where you see it working

Section titled “Where you see it working”

Once a live signal comes in, RENDERWAVE gives you several read-outs:

  • Level meters. Under Settings, the Audio tab shows Bass, Mid, and High meters that track the incoming sound.
  • Global audio controls. The Audio section of the creator panel shows its Profile, Amount, Speed, and Hit Count controls once a signal is present. Until then it prompts you to start capture or route audio in. See the audio panel.
  • Per-control activity dots. Each parameter card shows a small dot that brightens with the band driving it, and its slider takes on that band’s color while assigned.
  • Live band meters. Open a control’s audio source picker and every band shows a small bar that reacts in real time, so you can pick the one that best matches the part of the track you want to follow.

Moving meters and dots mean your assignments are live. If they sit flat while music plays, the app is not hearing the signal: start with Audio input.

Input gain is automatic

Section titled “Input gain is automatic”

RENDERWAVE normalizes the incoming level for you. It runs a noise gate to ignore silence and adjusts for quiet or loud sources, so a track does not have to sit at a specific volume to drive the visuals. There is no manual input-gain slider. You shape the response instead, with the global controls and each control’s range and smoothing, covered in Tuning audio response.

Relationship to tempo

Section titled “Relationship to tempo”

Audio reactivity and tempo are related but separate. While reactivity is on, RENDERWAVE also estimates the track’s tempo from the beats it detects, which feeds beat-synced movement. Audio reactivity follows the sound moment to moment. Tempo features follow the grid of the beat. You can use either or both. For the beat side, see BPM and tap tempo and beat-synced visuals.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”