User Guide

GDZ SoundMotion creates a visualizer on your desktop that reacts to whatever your PC plays: music, videos, games, or your own microphone. Choose one of 18 visualizations and 15 color palettes, then leave it floating in a corner or pin it to your desktop as an animated decoration.

The three parts of SoundMotion

The following terms are used throughout this guide:

Install SoundMotion normally using the installer. On first launch the visualizer appears in the center of the screen and the tray icon appears next to the clock.

Updates can be checked manually from Options → General → Check for updates. If enabled, Start with Windows launches SoundMotion automatically when you sign in.

Everything most people need, all on one screen. The rest of the guide goes into detail.

Start playing some audio and the visualization comes to life.

If nothing is playing, the visualization stays still. That is intentional: SoundMotion pauses the visualization when there is no audio and resumes the instant sound returns.

Choosing the audio source

By default SoundMotion listens to the default Windows output — whatever your PC is playing. To visualize something else, such as a microphone or a line input, right-click the visualizer and open Audio source. Output and input devices use different icons, and the active device carries a check mark.

The list refreshes every time you open the menu, so headphones you just plugged in show up without restarting anything. The same list is available in Options → General, where a button lets you refresh it manually.

The visualizer

The window has no title bar or frame, so you interact with it directly:

Position and size are remembered: next time you open the program, the visualizer is exactly where you left it. Closing it only hides it — to close the program use Exit.

The tray icon

Right-click it for a short menu: Show / Hide, Options… and Exit, plus Exit widget mode while Widget mode is active. This is also where update notices appear; clicking the notification opens the download page.

If you cannot see the icon: Windows hides tray icons it considers rarely used. Click the small ^ arrow next to the clock, and drag the icon onto the taskbar to keep it visible, or enable it in Windows Settings → Personalization → Taskbar.

The right-click menu

The quick control menu: the most-used settings without opening any window.

Rule of thumb: the right-click menu for quick changes, Options for fine-tuning — exact sensitivity, opacity, or the settings of an individual visualization.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcuts work when the visualizer has focus. If you have been typing elsewhere, click it once and they respond again. Press F1 for the same list inside the app:

The arrows are the fastest way to explore: cycle visualizations with ← → and, when you find one you like, try palettes with ↑ ↓. If Options is open at the same time, its drop-downs follow along.

Open it by double-clicking the visualizer, pressing O, or choosing Options… from the right-click or tray menu. Double-clicking opens it on the Visualization tab, since that is usually the first setting users want to adjust; every other way opens it on General.

The window automatically opens next to the visualizer so it does not cover it, and you can move it by dragging any empty area. Close it with Close, the ✕ button, or Esc.

Visualization tab

Each visualization remembers its own settings. Sensitivity and opacity are stored separately for each one. You can keep a sensitive, transparent Oscilloscope and a calm, opaque Bars, and each returns to its own values when you switch back.

Restoring a single visualization

Once you have been playing with the settings of one visualization, you may want that one back the way it came without losing the work you did on the other 17. The Visualization tab does exactly that: it discards the saved settings of the active visualization and restores its default settings, since each one keeps its options in its own fields.

Nothing else is touched — the other visualizations, the palette, the language, the window and the General tab all stay as they were. If what you want is to reset the whole appearance instead, use Restore defaults on the General tab.

General tab

18 ways of showing the same audio. Switch with ← →, from the right-click menu, or from the Visualization tab.

Every visualization remembers its own settings independently. Whatever you adjust in one — sensitivity, opacity, its own controls — is stored only for that one, and comes back exactly as you left it the next time you select it.

All 18 are customizable. Visualizations that used to have no settings of their own gained the basics in this version — spacing, thicknesses, peak and cell shape, fall speed — and the ones that already had settings gained more. Each one's controls appear automatically in the Visualization options panel, and are listed under its description below.

Bars

A classic equalizer: bass on the left, treble on the right. Bars (8–96) · Bar spacing (0–45) · LED segments (0–32) · Vertical gradient · Rounded corners

3D bars

The same equalizer, extruded into depth: besides the front face, you see the top face and one side face, and every depth edge aims at the same vanishing point, so the row reads like a scale model. The default visualization for new installations. Bars (8–64) · Bar spacing (0–45) · Depth (5–45) · Camera angle (−100–100) · Camera height (0–100) · Floor grid (0–24) · Vertical gradient

Bars + peak

Like Bars, but each one leaves a peak marker at its maximum that falls back slowly. Makes peaks easier to see. Bars (8–96) · Bar spacing (0–45) · Peak separation (0–100) · Fall speed (25–300) · Peak shape · Rounded corners

Mirror bars

Bars growing from the center upwards and downwards. Works especially well in wide, short windows. Bars (8–96) · Bar spacing (0–45) · Reflection (0–100) · Center gap (0–100) · Rounded corners

LED matrix

Dots that light up like the VU meters of an old hi-fi. Peak hold does double duty: at 0 there is no peak marker, and the higher you set it, the slower the marker falls. Columns (8–48) · Rows (4–32) · LED spacing (0–70) · Peak hold (0–100) · Square LEDs

Grid

A field of cells that follows the spectrum and throws waves out from the center on every bass hit. Density (6–40) · Cell shape

Radial

Spikes shooting out in every direction from a core that pulses with the volume. Line thickness (25–300) · Rounded ends · Show core · Core color

Blob

An organic shape that flows with the music. Smooth and symmetrical. Border thickness (0–300)

Flower

Petals that open and close with each frequency while it slowly rotates. Here Rounded corners curves the sides of the petals. Size (0.5–1.6) · Rounded corners · Show core

Rings

Concentric circles that widen and thicken, each one tuned to a range of frequencies. Rings (3–20) · Intensity (0.5–3) · Ring style · Glow (0–100) · Smoothing (0–100) · Fit the window

Tunnel

Polygons that rotate and recede, creating a sense of depth. With 3 sides they become triangles; with 8, they approach a circular shape. Rings (4–18) · Intensity (0.5–3) · Sides

Spiral

Dots spread along a spiral that pulse with the sound. At Spin 0 it stays still and only throbs; negative values make it rotate in the opposite direction. Arms (1–6) · Turns (1–6) · Spin (−3–3) · Breathing (0–100)

Kaleidoscope

The spectrum mirrored around the center, like looking through a real kaleidoscope. Size (0.5–1.6) · Segments · Spin (−3–3) · Idle length (0–100)

Oscilloscope

The raw sound wave crossing the window. The best one for seeing the shape of each instrument. Line thickness (25–300) · Border thickness (0–300)

Radial wave

The same wave, wrapped into a circle. Line thickness (25–300) · Border thickness (0–300)

Spectrogram

Time scrolls to the left and each column stores a snapshot of the sound at that moment, bass at the bottom, treble at the top. Ideal for seeing the structure of a song. Time window (2–30 s) · Color by

Beat image

Make your own image pulse to the bass using an album cover, a logo, or a photo. Choose image… opens a file picker, and Default restores the GDZSoft icon. Size (20–100) · Intensity (0–2) · Beat sensitivity (0–100) · Fall time (0–100) · Image

Text

Animated text that dances. Type whatever you like — a name, your radio station, a greeting — and choose the font. Word · Reaction · Font · Intensity (0–2)

3D bars, in detail

3D bars is the new visualization introduced in this version, and the one you get on a fresh install. It is the classic equalizer extended into depth: each bar is a solid block, showing its front face, top and one side, and all the depth edges converge on a single vanishing point. Move that point and the whole row tilts with it.

Out of the box: 64 bars, bar spacing 5, depth at the minimum, camera centered and at its highest position, no floor grid and no vertical gradient. A flat, clean starting point — turn up the depth and drop the camera to see what the perspective can do.

The four reactions of the Text visualization

Besides the word and the font, Text lets you choose how the letters respond to the sound:

If the text field is cleared completely, it automatically returns to SoundMotion. Intensity controls how strong the effect looks, whichever reaction you choose.

The palette sets the colors of every visualization — it changes how they look, never how they move. Switch with ↑ ↓, from the right-click menu, or from the Visualization tab.

Widget mode places the visualizer on the desktop behind your windows, making it behave like an animated desktop background. Turning it on does three things:

• The visualizer drops behind other windows. Any normal application window will cover it, and it only becomes visible again after minimizing those windows.
• Mouse clicks pass through it. Desktop icons, folders and shortcuts underneath keep working as if it were not there.
• Always on top and Click-through are managed automatically and greyed out in Options. Your previous settings are restored when you turn Widget mode off.

Which mode do I want?

If you enjoy using SoundMotion and would like to support its continued development, you can make a donation via PayPal by scanning the QR code below.

Thank you for helping keep SoundMotion improving.