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7 BEST After Effects Audio Spectrum Templates + How To Make Your Own!

Download these paid & FREE audio spectrum and sound visualizer templates for Adobe After Effects. They come with 7 unique templates that are customizable for any resolution and they're easy to use even if you’re a beginner!

March 9, 2023
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Music visualization is an art form that combines visual arts and music. Visual art is used to decorate space and music is used to decorate time. By combining the two elements together, we can truly immerse ourselves in the emotions created by the sound and visual elements. It allows musical and digital artists to create new forms of expression by combining different senses in a way that was never possible before softwares like After Effects even existed.

Sounds complicated right? Well, one way to create music visualization in AE even if you're a beginner is by using templates. These customizable and dynamic sound spectrum templates provide an extra layer of visual interest to your content, creating visually stunning music videos or promotional content that will stand out from the crowd.

Audio Waveform Visualizer For After Effects

Here’s how to visualize adobe after effects audio waveform in Real-time using 2 FREE and 5 paid audio spectrum templates. We've curated these 7 video templates to help you create a sound visualizer for your song within a few minutes. All you need to do is replace the placeholder text with your own, then import and connect your audio. You may also want to edit the background layers and other effects included in the composition, but that’s just optional.

3D Music Visualizer in Your Video v2.0

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This unique 3D audio visualizer attaches to any surface! simply create a few tracking points, then link it to the composition to see it work. If you're using FCPX, you can download other versions of this audio visualizers template here. It features a clean and modern template that works well for a variety of content types. It's better to use this template as part of a larger music video, rather than on it's own. If you know how to, we'd suggest you create a 3D environment inside of Blender, then motion track this visualizer to a 3D or 2D plane you've just created.

How The Audio Waveform Visualization Is Created In This Template

If you do not want to spend any money on premium templates, you can simply make your own with no plugins. Just use the "audio spectrum" effect which is found natively within the program. You'll then need to set 3D motion tracking points somewhere in your scene to attach the visualizer to. Justin Odisho has created a great tutorial on how to create the visualizer. We'd highly recommend you watch this tutorial to create the first part of the 3D spectrum on your own.

3 Audio Waveform Visualizations (It's A Audio Visualizer Template Free Download)

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This bundle includes 3 fully customizable sound waveform templates which can be resized to any resolution, just like the other templates in this pack. Use in combination with a prism effect for the most aesthetic sound spectrum for your video!

After Effects Audio Spectrum Plugin

Download The #1 After Effects Music Visualizer Template

This drag and drop plugin created by AEJuice lets you design Audio spectrums for your song in just a few clicks!

Sound Visualization Social Media Kit (FREE)

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Create A Sound Waveform Effect in less than 5 Minutes! This template may require several hours of manual editing as it precisely synchronizes each musical element with an on-screen effect.

Using this template, you can individually synchronize kicks, snares, high hats, melody, chord progression and other music timeline elements to visual elements inside of After Effects. It would really help to use MIDI files to identify where each note sits on the timeline. Simply open them up in FL Studio, Ableton or any other DAW and simply transfer the time codes from the soundtrack into After Effects. If this seems like too much effort, you also have the option to use the audio waveform effect over the background to create a more simple but less aesthetic music visualizer effect.

Features:

  • clean typography
  • minimalistic design
  • text animation
  • customizable background
  • precise and manual sound synchronization

You can use this audio visualizer as a background for any music project, but just remember to customize the text and other background layers if necessary. You can simply double click on the pre-comp which is labeled “background” to add in your own image/video to us instead of the placeholder.

After Effects Audio Visualizer Tool For Music Producers

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Compared to the V1 audio visualization template, this template version is more simple but it looks just as good. The only difference is that this music visualizer does not synchronize individual layers and effects to the beats of a song, instead it uses a waveform effect that follows the loudness.

Features:

  • Custom background
  • Colorful with plenty of effect
  • Easier to edit compared to the V1

Adobe After Effects Audio Visualizer Template

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If you're looking for more cool audio spectrum effects for After Effects and/or Premiere Pro, then you should try out one of these custom templates. These templates are easier to use than the two listed above. That’s because they include on-screen guides which tell you exactly how to use them.

Audio Spectrum After Effects Template V.5

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The final template on our list offers a range of customization options to adjust everything from the color scheme to the audio response. Its sleek design and responsive layout make it a great choice for designing a visualizer that responds similarly to the one featured on the NCS music channel.

How Do You Make An Audio Spectrum In After Effects?

We've gone over some of the best templates for creating a music visualizer, so know were going to show you how you can create one of your own in under 5 minutes!

1. Create a composition and import your audio

Once you've opened up After Effects and imported your footage and music, create a new composition. We recommend 1080p resolution and 30FPS, but you can adjust this to your preference depending on your computer's performance and video requirements.

2. Generate the spectrum shape

Next, make a new solid by going to Layer > New > Solid. With the solid selected, go to Effect > Generate > Audio Spectrum. In the Audio Spectrum settings, change the Audio Layer to the audio in the composition.

You can now adjust your start and end frequencies based on your own audio and taste, but here's what we recommend:

  • Increase the Frequency Bands to anywhere between 400 to 600 and the Thickness to 5.73 to achieve a solid shape.
  • Drop the Maximum Height to 430 or 530 to reduce the distance threshold.
  • Increase the Audio Duration to 130 to make the movements of the spectrum less jarring.
  • Change the Hue Interpolation to 50 degrees, which gives the spectrum a slight gradient, and adjust the inside and outside colors to your liking.
  • Finally, change the Side Options to Side A so that the spectrum only animates upwards.

3. Create a second spectrum

This step is optional, but if you want to make your spectrum look better, then we suggest you try this technique but use a different color for the second spectrum layer.

To create a second spectrum layer, all you need to is duplicate the first one and rename it. Adjust the settings of this secondary spectrum so it differentiates in behavior compared to the first one.

Here are the exact settings we chose for the second spectrum:

  • Maximum Height was set to 900 and we adjusted the inside and outside colors to pink and purple so it can be noticed behind the first spectrum.
  • We dragged Spectrum 2 below Spectrum 1.
  • We also created a third spectrum by duplicating one of the spectrums again and placed it below the other two. this third spectrum had the greatest height and was set to display the colors blue and red.

4. Add a background

To make things simple, first pre-compose the audio spectrum layers and drag the pre-comp into a new composition. To do this, select all the layers in the composition (including the audio) and go to Layer > Precompose. Name the new composition anything you like to identify it and create the pre-comp.

To add a background, drag the pre-composed audio spectrum into a new composition and add in your own background media, or you can make your own simple one by adding the color gradient effect to a blank solid layer.

5. Add effects

Time to get creative and customize your audio spectrum by adding some effects and animations. We added a hint of glow to ours. Here's how you can do it too:

Add Gaussian blur to one of the secondary spectrum layers and in the Gaussian Blur settings, set the Blurriness to 27. Then change the blending mode of the Glow layer to Add and the opacity to anywhere over 44%.

Audio Visualizer After Effects Projects - Which One To Choose?

That concludes our list of the 7 best After Effects visualizer templates. If you're unsure which one to choose, we'd recommend you try the samples of each one, or purchase a collection pack to try a few different styles. If you're looking for more templates, or the ones on this list didn't suit your needs, you can simply follow the link to each of the templates on this list to access the Motion Array, VideoHive and Envato Elements collection of audio visualizer templates for after effects. While Envato Elements and Motion Array both offer free downloads with any subscription, VideoHive will require you to purchase templates individually.