If you make audio-reactive visuals, you have probably met TouchDesigner. It is powerful, mature and has a large community. It is also a visual tool first: sound comes in through operators, and a full music setup usually means a second program next to it.
Infinite starts from the other side. It is a DAW and a visual tool on one canvas, free and open source. This page is a practical comparison, including the places where TouchDesigner is the better pick.
What Infinite does well for this job
- Audio and visuals share a canvas. Synths, sequencers and plugins sit next to shaders and 3D, wired with cables. There is no OSC bridge to set up.
- Audio analysis is a node. Audio Analyze gives an 8-band FFT and onset detection that you can wire to any control.
- It hosts plugins. AU (macOS) and VST3 (macOS, Windows, Linux) plugins load into the graph, and their parameters can be modulated by visuals.
- It is free and open source. No licence tier, and the source is on GitHub.
- Video out to other tools. Syphon (macOS), Spout (Windows) and NDI carry the picture to a projector tool or a streaming setup.
Where TouchDesigner is stronger
- It has been around for years, so the amount of tutorials, forum answers and shared networks is far larger.
- Python scripting and a deep set of operators cover installations and data work that Infinite does not aim at.
- Many venues and teams already have TouchDesigner in their pipeline.
If your show depends on that ecosystem, stay there. If you want sound and picture designed together, with a synth and a shader in the same patch, Infinite is worth an afternoon.
A quick way to judge it
- Download Infinite for your platform.
- Open the Moves with the music template from the Library.
- Press play, then replace the shape with something of your own.
For numbers, the site has a benchmarks page that states its method and its limits.
Bringing a shader over
If you already write GLSL, the Field Pixel node accepts a per-pixel kernel and compiles it for the GPU. Audio values arrive as ordinary inputs, so a shader that reacts to sound is a few lines. The Field language post explains how it works.
Originally published at https://infinitedevices.org/blog/free-touchdesigner-alternative-for-audio-reactive-visuals.html. Infinite is a free, open-source DAW for visuals, music and code: infinitedevices.org.
