It won't kick a llama's ass, but Opera has added a Spotify visualizer to its latest version of its free Opera One browser.
The renderer, known as Sonic, will be part of Opera's dynamic themes, which use the WebGPU standard to apply a dynamic theme that runs in the background of the browser. Essentially, it's a shader that uses your PC's graphics engine to create a moving background.
The browser also comes with a music player, which has Spotify installed by default. According to Opera, users will have the option to upgrade to Spotify Premium as part of a browser update.
The Opera Sonic theme (which has nothing to do with the Sega game and/or its accompanying cartoon and movie franchise) takes Spotify input and transforms it into a dynamic background.
“With the Sonic theme, the browser captures audio from the sidebar and transforms it into a power spectrum texture, where one axis represents frequency and the other represents time,” Opera said. in a blog post. “This texture is passed to the shader, where each pixel measures the current sound intensity using its position on the screen and coordinates driven by the animation. The shader applies a frequency compensation curve to balance the spectrum and outputs an amplitude value that controls animation, color and other visual effects in sync with the music. So if all of this sounds complicated, just remember that everything you see on the screen is completely unique to what you're listening to.”
Sonic is an interesting touch. Any old tech head knows that the original renderer was found in Winamp, which synchronized the rendering to the rhythm and flow of the music being played. Winamp is quietly back in 2022then received another update in 2023.
Is Sonic in Opera as good as Winamp? At the moment I wouldn't say so. But Opera has many more resources than the small Winamp team. And who knows? Further iterations could make this something special.
Opera One is free and separate from the company. Opera Neon browser with artificial intelligence And Opera GX browser for gamerseach of which has its own unique features.
