Spectral imaging · One CLI

See sound as living color.

songsee is a single Go CLI that turns audio into modern spectrogram and feature-panel images — fast WAV/MP3 decode, ffmpeg fallback, nine visualization modes, six palettes.

Quickstart GitHub
brew install steipete/tap/songsee
spectrogrammelchromahpssselfsimloudnesstempogrammfccflux

Other install options →

#Try it

After installing, every render is a one-liner.

# Default: a clean spectrogram next to the input file.
songsee track.mp3

# Mel spectrogram, magma palette, 2K wide.
songsee track.mp3 --viz mel --style magma --width 2048 --height 1024

# All nine modes in one grid.
songsee track.mp3 --viz spectrogram,mel,chroma,hpss,selfsim,loudness,tempogram,mfcc,flux

# Slice eight seconds out of a long file.
songsee track.mp3 --start 12.5 --duration 8 -o slice.jpg

# Pipe from stdin, write PNG to stdout.
cat track.mp3 | songsee - --format png -o - > spectro.png

The default output is a 1920×1080 JPEG (quality 95) written next to the input. --format png switches encoder, -o redirects the path, and -o - streams to stdout for piping.

#What songsee does

  • One binary, nine views. spectrogram, mel, chroma, hpss, selfsim, loudness, tempogram, mfcc, flux — pick one, combine several, or render the full grid.
  • Fast decode paths. Native Go decoders for WAV (PCM, float, extensible) and MP3; ffmpeg fallback covers everything else.
  • Six palettes. classic, magma, inferno, viridis, gray, and claw — each tuned for log-magnitude data.
  • Auto-contrast. Per-panel percentile clamping (0.05 / 0.98) keeps every visualization readable without manual tuning.
  • Scriptable I/O. File path, stdin (-), or stdout. Quiet mode for CI; verbose mode prints decode and slice details to stderr.
  • No Python. Single static binary. No model files, no virtualenv, no GPU.

#Pick your path

  • Trying it. Install → Quickstart. One brew formula, one command, one image.
  • Picking a view. Visualizations describes what each of the nine modes shows and when to use it.
  • Picking a palette. Palettes lists the six palettes with their gradient stops.
  • Audio inputs. Decoding covers WAV/MP3 fast paths, ffmpeg fallback, sample rate, and stdin.
  • Output and batches. Rendering explains output sizing, grid layout, format selection, and stdout streaming.
  • Algorithm details. Pipeline documents windowing, FFT, bin mapping, and normalization.
  • Flag reference. CLI lists every flag with its default.

#Project

Active development; the changelog tracks what shipped. Released under the MIT license. Source on GitHub.