XY Oscilloscope

Watch XY Oscilloscope live in the browser

An analog oscilloscope in XY mode: the left audio channel moves the beam horizontally and the right channel moves it vertically, drawn in glowing green phosphor over a graticule. A mono signal collapses into a diagonal line, and silence parks the beam as a bright dot in the centre.

This is the display oscilloscope music is written for, where sound composed across both channels draws pictures. The beam follows a band-limited curve between samples, using four-times oversampling with a windowed sinc, and its light is spread along each stroke, so fast strokes are dim and slow ones bright. Afterglow, blur and scatter passes add the phosphor glow.

What it reacts to

• Left channel: moves the beam horizontally
• Right channel: moves the beam vertically
• Stereo difference: opens the line into loops and figures; identical channels give a diagonal line
• Silence: a still dot in the centre

Tune

Tune covers the screen settings: Intensity, Persistence, Afterglow, Focus, Glow, Overexposure, Hue and Scale, plus switches for the graticule, swapping X and Y, and flipping either axis.

Music that suits it

Oscilloscope music written to draw images is what it is built for; ordinary stereo mixes give wide, swirling figures, and mono recordings a single diagonal line.

How to play it

Install Deus, play music on Spotify, YouTube Music, Yandex Music or any other tab and click the Deus icon on that tab. Then pick XY Oscilloscope in the Oscilloscope presets, or press ← → on the page until it comes up.