Fractal Sound Explorer
A downloadable tool for Windows
Turn fractals into musical instruments or just explore the intricate and complex structures with this simple tool. By converting the fractal orbits to sound waves, many interesting effects can be achieved, which can be used for sound effects in your game. A better explanation about what this tool does and how it works can be found here:
Notes
The fractals are designed to run in real time on a GPU. If the program is going too slow, you can simply shrink the size of the window to make it run faster. The rendering is also designed to increase the image quality over time. So keep still for a bit before taking screenshots to get higher quality.
Controls
- H - Toggle Help Menu
- Left Mouse - Click or drag to hear orbits
- Middle Mouse - Drag to pan view
- Right Mouse - Stop orbit and sound
- Scroll Wheel - Zoom in and out
- D - Toggle Audio Dampening
- C - Toggle Color
- F11 - Toggle Fullscreen
- S - Save Snapshot
- R - Reset View
- J - Hold down, move mouse, and release to make Julia sets. Press again to switch back.
- 1 - Mandelbrot Set
- 2 - Burning Ship
- 3 - Feather Fractal
- 4 - SFX Fractal
- 5 - Hénon Map
- 6 - Duffing Map
- 7 - Ikeda Map
- 8 - Chirikov Map
Source Code
Source code is MIT licenced and available on my GitHub:
https://github.com/HackerPoet/FractalSoundExplorer
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
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Hello! I name-dropped this in the description for SYNTH jam. It would be cool to see more projects like this on itch.
The Ikeda map is a "8-bit computer tape sound emulator"
thakn you
tweaked the settings a bit, Having some real nice fun here.
this took me 2 hours to figure out but it was worth it. pretty impressive for a person who only knows ruby right?
Where are the screenshots saved?
in the same files you acivate the app in
Sound does not work.
It does work, your machine may be non-standard / out of date. What what hardware are you using? Maybe they can investigate it to add support for your hardware
very cool and insightful!
really cool
Has anybody tried images from the so called phenomenon Crop Circles. I would like to play with them but I do not have a powerful PC with a dedicated GPU atm. What are the system requirements for this software?
The Chirikov Map is so cool I wonder why it sounds like a different instrument
Sorry dude, I don't have any money or an allowance.
When I downloaded this and tried to open it, it just said that it was at high risk and a dangerous file even though I want to use it :(
Use it anyway, it is perfectly safe.
Click more info, then run anyway.
Oh ok thanks :)
cool
cool
cool
cool
cool
cool
bagels are weird food
pls make it run in browser!
try this sound fractal maker not made by owner of this or me sry
oops try this link
load to the infinite pls mandelbrot set
my computer: no it will crash its a notebook not ps 200x ultra master quality no
my computer when i zoom in on the any set to much
its about it ...
found a glitch
629 kB
only windows or pc
in order to do this press key j on yellow
NAHH
yes
I’ve been meaning to thank you for this. Your video was very inspirational for a small game I developed last year.
When I first heard the SFX fractal, it seemed perfect for synthesizing melee weapon sounds. So I built my own parameterized implementation that procedurally generates sounds in real-time based on players’ equipment and interactions. I found that the x- and y-axes correlated well with my inputs (modulation and timbre, respectively), and I controlled the pitch by manipulating the sample rates of the buffers. To tie it together, I interpolated between two points at various rates to create distinctive sounds for each weapon.
That was such a fun exercise! I definitely need to explore this concept, and other noisy fractals, more in the future.
Excellent work!
That's awesome! Yeah, it's a great technique if you need a lot of sound effects with almost zero extra memory. I'll check out the game.
what are some good custom fractals?
julia set is the purifier for sound? try with last map
ok?
try number 8 it sounds really cool
Hope you don't mind, but I got really inspired by the sounds and made a little techno album with it! It's fairly minimal, and I recorded it simply by messing with the program while I had a few drum machines going, but I think it turned out pretty cool! https://doortonow-here.bandcamp.com/album/fracktalmusick-live
nice!
nice
Honestly I think if we had the option to add reverb and select multiple points on a fractal this could potentially become a good ambient synthesizer for creating eerie or slightly dreamy sound effects.
Pretty cool! I used some of the sounds in a new track
https://soundcloud.com/sarah-windley-801772153/burning-ship