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Baryon turns audio into a real-time cymatic field. The visual is not a waveform, bar graph, particle system, or point cloud. It is a continuous volumetric field rendered as a 3D cymatic structure.

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What you are seeing

At a high level:
  1. Baryon analyzes the incoming audio.
  2. The analysis excites a set of modal patterns.
  3. Those modes form a continuous 3D field inside a virtual cavity.
  4. The renderer samples that field through the volume and draws the visible glow, contours, color, and depth.
That means the meaningful state is not a list of screen coordinates. The meaningful state is the current modal field: which modes are active, how strongly they are excited, and how the renderer samples the resulting volume.

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How physical is the water model?

Baryon’s modal backend declares a bounded water cavity rather than treating the image as arbitrary audio-reactive geometry. Its default apparatus uses a 12.5 m acoustic side length, water density and sound speed, and a declared incident-pressure reference at its virtual drive plane. That reference adds weak, physically derived waveform steepening and harmonic generation before the audio drives the modes. The pressure is a property of the virtual apparatus, not a source level or hardware calibration; Baryon does not claim to measure the pressure produced by your speakers. The engine also does not simulate turbulence, flowing material, cavitation, or the full motion of a laboratory water surface. It is a bounded-water modal model with a restrained finite-amplitude correction, followed by an artistic volumetric observation of the resulting field.

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Why settings matter

Most controls are either analysis controls, field controls, render controls, or camera controls. The carrier core’s world-space FWHM is fixed by Baryon’s internal reference-apparatus profile. It is not a user control or an automation target.

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Camera versus rotation

This distinction matters when you are trying to capture a specific expression:
  • Camera orbit changes where you view the field from.
  • Rotation Mode changes whether the rendered cymatic volume itself rotates.
  • Manual Rotation only applies when Rotation Mode is Manual.
  • Motion Scale only applies when Rotation Mode is Audio.
  • Lock Camera prevents accidental orbit dragging. It does not freeze the cymatic field.

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Choosing an input profile

The main choice is between two profiles, and it comes down to one question: does the audio have a single lead pitch, or many sounds at once?
  • Voice tracks one dominant pitch and treats its harmonics as texture. Use it for a singer, a spoken voice, or a lead instrument.
  • Ambient lets many simultaneous sources shape the field. Use it for music, a full mix, or a live room.
For the most faithful result:
  • Use a clean recording or a direct feed when possible.
  • Keep echo cancellation, noise suppression, and auto gain off for line feeds or clean files; turn them on only when a noisy room makes capture difficult.
  • Start with lower Material Density and Caustic Strength, then raise them until the field reads clearly without flattening into a bright sheet.
  • Save a preset per source so you can return to a look instantly.

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What coordinates would mean

Because Baryon renders a continuous field, an exportable “coordinate” set is not the same thing as a point cloud. A future geometry export would need to choose a moment in time, sample the field, extract a surface or volume, and convert that result into a mesh format that design and slicing tools understand. The current public app does not export raw coordinates, point clouds, STL, OBJ, GLTF, or other 3D-printable geometry. See Creative workflows for the current capture path and the shape of a future export workflow.