Fresco

Opinion

Not yet listened to or tried in a host, and the picture has not been looked at on a real analyser. Put a spectrum analyser or spectrogram after it, feed it white noise or a pad, press play and the built-in rings and cross should draw themselves; then Load picture and try a high-contrast drawing or a logo with large shapes. Source Tone is the clean way to see a picture (steady sinusoids); Input keeps the input’s own timing and pitch and is the way to make a voice or a synth “wear” the picture. Bright, crowded pictures are loud: trim with Output.

Functionality

A 2048-point short-time Fourier transform (Hann, hop 512) whose magnitudes are replaced by the picture’s column under the playhead. Bottom/Top set the frequencies at the picture’s edges (Axis Log, as most spectrograms are, or Linear); Range, Contrast and Pixels set how brightness becomes level (black is silence). Length is the time the playhead takes to cross the picture, as a free loop or locked to the host timeline. Follow input level makes silence in silent out. Latency 2048 samples, reported to the host. The picture’s path is saved with the project. JPEG, GIF, WebP and video are not supported (the plugin says so when you load one).

Status

Core covered by tests (decoders against PNGs written by Python’s zlib in nine formats and every row filter, damaged files under ASan, band position and level against formulas, playhead, transport, block-size independence), mutation-checked. Not heard, not seen on a real analyser, not tried in a host.