Spectrojam vs MuVis
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Spectrojam
This app transforms sounds from your microphone into dynamic colors and shapes on your screen. It visualizes the frequency composition of everyday noises and musical tunes, allowing you to see sound signatures and even translate them into musical notes.
- Real-time sound to color/shape visualization
- Musical note display for pitch accuracy
- Chord and harmony analysis
- Adjustable gain for volume control
- High-resolution premium visualizer
- Color modulation effects
Read full descriptionHide full description
Spectrojam® listens to your microphone and turns the sound it hears into colors and shapes on your screen. If you speak, for example, you will see the individual frequencies emitted by your voice. If you whistle, you will see shapes and colors move and change on the screen in perfect sync with your tune. You will be amazed to see the frequency composition of the sounds in your everyday life. Each noise has a unique signature, and now you can see it all! The Musical Note Display can translate the sounds you make into musical notes. This allows anyone to sing a perfect "A" without even hearing a reference note. Spectrojam® can display up to 3 musical notes at the same time, allowing you to pick apart chords and harmonies. It works great with the human voice and musical instruments. Unlock Premium mode to access a high-resolution sound visualizer which displays up to 12.3 million samples simultaneously (8,192 frequencies * 1500 time slices) for extremely high precision and maximum clarity. The Color Modulator smoothly cycles through your color selections, producing stunning visuals. If your environment is loud, simply use the Gain slider to reduce the overall input volume, or boost it if you want to detect whispers, breathing, and quiet background music. Explore your world in a whole new way. Download Spectrojam® today!
MuVis
This app creates dynamic, real-time visual representations of music being played from files or a device's microphone. Users can cycle through numerous visualizations and options, control playback, and switch between audio sources.
- Real-time audio visualization
- Music file playback
- Microphone input
- 34+ visualizations
- 8 visualization options
- Customizable toolbars
- iCloudDrive music selection
Read full descriptionHide full description
MuVis is an open-source macOS & iOS app for music visualization. It renders informative (and musically useful) graphical displays in real time from music files being played - or from the device's microphone. Real-time music visualization is an exciting endeavor - providing the user with dynamic visual and aural stimulation and edification. When the MuVis app first opens, the on-screen display should look somewhat like the first screenshot shown above and the computer's speakers should be playing music from a pre-loaded royalty-free music file. (Currently, the song file is "The Elevator Bossa Nova" from Bensound.com.) The on-screen display shows a real-time dynamic visual representation of the audio that you are hearing. The top and bottom toolbars contains buttons and sliders to allow you to control what you see. Triple-tap your screen to show/hide these toolbars. At the bottom left are two buttons labelled by left- and right-chevrons. Clicking the left one changes the display to the previous visualization, and clicking the right one changes the display to the next visualization - which allows you to cycle through the thirty-four visualizations currently provided by the app. Also, you can simply swipe left or right to change the visualization. Adjacent to these Visualization chevrons are two Option chevrons. When programming these visualization algorithms, there are numerous variations and options available to the developer. These buttons allow the user to select to see any of eight variations. The particular variation rendered is different for each visualization. Also, you can simply swipe up or down to change the option rendered. Adjacent to these Option chevrons is a “Pause” button. When clicked, it stops the music playback and freezes the visualization display. The button label changes to “Play” which, when clicked, causes the music playback and the visualization display to continue. The adjacent button has a "Microphone" icon. When pressed it stops playing the audio from the selected song file (and also stops it's visualization), and starts playing the live audio from the microphone (and starts it's visualization). The label then becomes a slashed microphone - which, when pressed, performs the reverse actions and changes the icon back to "Microphone". The next button has a "Music List" icon. It allows you to select whatever songs you want from your own iCloudDrive folder. Selecting a song causes that song to play - and the visualization to render its dynamic attributes. The adjacent button has a “Waveform” icon with a minus sign. When clicked, it passes the audio signal through a “spectral enhancer” filter which reduces the display of noise (usually percussive effects which smear spectral energy over a large frequency range), and enhances the display of spectral lines (usually the harmonics of musical notes). Finally, at the right end of the bottom toolbar are two buttons labelled UserG (for User Guide) and VisG (for Visualization Guide). Clicking either button activates a “Quick Look” popup window to display the app's documentation. The top toolbar contains two sliders - one controlling "Visualization Gain" and the other controlling "Visualization Treble Boost". As their names imply, sliding them adjusts the gain and slope of the visual data representation. The source code for this app is posted at www.github.com/Keith-43
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: MuVis at 5.0 against Spectrojam's 3.9. MuVis also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 1) and review sentiment (100% vs 69%). Spectrojam's advantage is ratings volume (25 vs 8) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, update cadence, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Spectrojam sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. MuVis asks for nothing beyond the download.
MuVis holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.9. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 25 and 8 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 69% of Spectrojam's written reviews are positive against 100% of MuVis's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on October 20, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Spectrojam | MuVis |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.9 (25 ratings) | 5.0 (8 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 69.2% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 25 — better | 8 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 67 MB | 18 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Nonsequential Time Labs | Keith Bromley |
Customer experience
Spectrojam
MuVis
In-app purchases
Spectrojam
- Premium$2.99
MuVis
No in-app purchases







