Cthugha is a

music visualization Music visualization or music visualisation, a feature found in electronic music visualizers and media player software, generates animated Computer-generated imagery, imagery based on a piece of music. The imagery is usually generated and rendered ...

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to Execution (computing), execute. It is one component of software, which also includes software documentation, documentation and other intangibl ...

. It was written in the mid-1990s by Kevin "Zaph" Burfitt, originally for the PC, and was later

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desig ...

to other platforms. It was freely distributed.

History

Cthugha was started by Australian coder Kevin "Zaph" Burfitt in September 1993 under

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

for the PC, but not released to the public until version 2.0 in March 1994. It wasn't until release 5.1p in October 1994 that popularity of the program took off; this coinciding with the relatively new availability of cheap sound-cards for PCs, such as the

Soundblaster Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards and audio peripherals designed by Creative Technology/Creative Labs of Singapore. The first Sound Blaster card was introduced in 1989. Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer au ...

. Cthugha was released for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

("Cthugha-L") in May 1995, and for the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

("MaCthugha") in January 1996 Cthugha was used as the

video wall A video wall is a special multi-monitor setup that consists of multiple computer monitors, video projectors, or television sets tiled together contiguously or overlapped in order to form one large screen. Typical display technologies include ...

background for the

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Aus ...

children's TV game show Challenger, hosted by

Zoe Sheridan Zoe Sheridan (born in Adelaide, 1978) is an Australian television presenter, radio announcer and voice over artist. Sheridan was a co-host of the Hot 30 Countdown on Brisbane radio from 1995 to 1998. She moved to Sydney in 1998 for a regular sl ...

during the late 90s. Burfitt stopped work on Cthugha in January 2001, and there were various attempts by others to carry on the project, but by that time there were so many clones of the software that there was little enthusiasm. Cthugha may have been the forerunner – either in inspiration, or possibly even as

source-code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, onl ...

– of the numerous and varied " visualisation" plugins for

mp3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

players and media players on many computer architectures. In 1998, it was ported to the

Winamp Winamp is a media player (software), media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Rad ...

music player.

Usage

''Cthugha'' uses a

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...

's CD, line or microphone input.

Reaction

The oscilloscope patterns of ''Cthugha'' have been described as "weird"Australian PC Review, October 1994 and "hypnotic".HotWired 3.03 (page 156), March 1995

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

The Official Cthugha pageCthugha development page
1994 software Freeware Audio software Music visualization software

History

Usage

Reaction

See also

References

External links