Libvisual is an abstraction library

Library (computer science)

In computer science, a library is a collection of resources used to develop software. These may include pre-written code and subroutines, classes, values or type specifications....

 that comes between applications and audio visualisation plugins.

Often when it comes to audio visualization plugins or programs that create visuals, they depend on a player or something else; basically, there is no general framework

Software framework

In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software providing generic functionality can be selectively changed by user code, thus providing application specific software...

 that enabled application developers to easily access interesting audio visualization plugins. Libvisual wants to change this by providing an interface towards plugins and applications; through this easy to use interface applications can easily access plugins and, since the drawing is done by the application, it also enables the developer to draw the visual anywhere desired.

Currently libvisual is mainly focused to Unix-like systems including FreeBSD

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

, Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, and NetBSD

NetBSD

NetBSD is a freely available open source version of the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. The NetBSD project is primarily focused on high quality design,...

.

The goal is to make libvisual a cross-platform

Cross-platform

In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...

 audio visualisation framework.

Other examples of audio visualization programs are Winamp

Winamp

Winamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...

 Advanced Visualization Studio

Advanced Visualization Studio

Advanced Visualization Studio , is a music visualization plugin for Winamp. It was designed by Winamp's creator, Justin Frankel. AVS has a customizable design which allows users to create their own visualization effects, or "presets". AVS was made open source software in May 2005, released under a...

 and MilkDrop

MilkDrop

MilkDrop is an open source, hardware-accelerated music visualization plugin for Winamp, which was originally developed by Ryan Geiss. It uses DirectX and intelligent beat detection to render iterated images which blend seamlessly...

.

Libvisual is released under the LGPL and included in every major linux distribution.

Media Players that support libvisual:

• Amarok
• XMMS2
  XMMS2
  XMMS2 is a new generation of the XMMS audio player. It is a new design, written from scratch, separate from the XMMS codebase...
  
  
• Beep Media Player
  Beep Media Player
  The Beep Media Player was a free audio player, based on the XMMS multimedia player. The lead developer was Milosz “deadchip” Derezynski. The BMP is mainly a port of XMMS to GTK+ 2 and, as such, integrates better with the look and feel of more recent versions of GNOME, Xfce, and, if using the...
  
  
• BMPx
• LiVES
  LiVES
  LiVES is a free software video editing software and VJ tool, released under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later. There are binary versions available for most popular Linux distributions...
  
   Video Editing System
• Rhythmbox
  Rhythmbox
  Rhythmbox is an audio player that plays and helps organize digital music. Originally inspired by Apple's iTunes, it is free software, designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop using the GStreamer media framework. However, Rhythmbox functions on desktop environments other than GNOME.-Music...
  
  

Libraries supporting libvisual:

• Gstreamer
  GStreamer
  GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework written in the C programming language with the type system based on GObject.GStreamer allows a programmer to create a variety of media-handling components, including simple audio playback, audio and video playback, recording, streaming and editing...