Spectrum Bars is the canonical music visualizer pattern — vertical frequency bars that rise and fall with the audio spectrum. It is the most readable, recognisable, and broadcast-friendly scene in the Xenaxio library, and works across virtually every genre.
Each bar maps to a frequency band from the FFT analysis of your track. Bass sits on the left, treble on the right, and bar heights pulse with the energy in each band. The result is the kind of motion every listener instinctively reads as "music sound".
Despite its simplicity, Spectrum Bars is highly tunable. You control the number of bars (4 to 256), the gap and corner radius, optional mirroring below a baseline, glow intensity, bass boost, temporal smoothing, falling peak caps, and palette gradient direction. Combined with one of the 20 curated palettes, it produces dramatically different looks — from a clean minimal broadcast lower-third to an intense neon synthwave wall.
For YouTube music videos, podcasts, and Shorts, Spectrum Bars is the safe default. For Spotify Canvas or animated cover art, set a small bar count and high glow to get an intimate, focused look.
What it does well
- FFT-driven, frame-accurate response
- Configurable bar count, gap, and corner radius
- Optional baseline mirroring
- Falling peak caps for that classic equalizer feel
- Bass-boost weighting for low-end emphasis
- Palette-tinted or solid bar colours
Best for
- Genres
- EDMPopRockHip-hopSynthwave
- Formats
- YouTube 16:9Shorts 9:16Reels 9:16
Key parameters
barCount- 4–256 bars
mirrored- Reflect bars below baseline for a stereo look
glow- Soft halo around each bar (0–1)
bassBoost- Multiply low-frequency bar heights
capHeight- Animated falling peak indicator
Rendering
Renders on Canvas 2D — broad browser support, instant compositing with the rest of the layer stack, and zero shader compilation cost.