Music Waveform vs Radiance
Music Waveform
music-waveform.comRadiance
radiance.videoSide by side
| Figure | Music Waveform | Radiance |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Audio Visualizer Software | 8.5 (#2) | 7.4 (#23) |
| Purpose | Turns audio files into animated waveform videos for musicians, podcasters and video editors. | Radiance is free and open-source video art software designed for live performance. |
Plans
In their own words
Music Waveform
Music Waveform turns audio files into animated waveform videos in a browser for musicians, podcasters, and video editors. It accepts MP3, WAV, OGG, M4A/AAC, and FLAC files, with eight adjustable styles: bars, mirror, radial, scope, area, dots, blob, and circle. Users can tune color, waveform reaction, and resolution up to 4K, then preview the animation in sync with playback. One-click presets provide analysis and visual settings. Exports include MP4 video, transparent WebM, and ZIP files of transparent PNG frames; PNG frames do not include an audio track. Audio decoding, analysis, rendering, and encoding run locally in the browser, and the maker says files are not uploaded or stored on a server. The free plan costs nothing, with no account, watermark, or paywall. MP4 export requires an up-to-date Chromium browser or Safari 17 or newer. Long exports may run out of memory on older phones. The tool does not edit or accept video, transcribe audio, separate stems, batch-process, or provide an API.
Radiance
Radiance is free, open-source video art software for live performance, including VJ work. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Performers can work with more than 150 GPU-accelerated WGSL effects and edit them live. MPV integration opens video clips, images, files, webcams, live streams, and YouTube videos. Beat detection uses incoming audio as a shared time reference for effects. Radiance can send output to one or more screens and includes a projection mapping editor. The software is released under the MIT/X11 License. YouTube videos loaded by URL require yt-dlp to be installed separately. Building from source requires Rust, Cargo, and dynamically linked libmpv. The project README notes that MIDI controller input and TCP output for LED displays are absent from the rewrite compared with version 0.6.1. Radiance is listed at free.