> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.baryon.live/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Understanding the engine

> A plain-language map of what Baryon renders and how the main settings affect the cymatic field.

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.

## 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.

## 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.

## Why settings matter

Most controls are either analysis controls, field controls, render controls, or camera controls.

| Setting area            | What it changes                                                                                        |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Audio Input Profile** | How Baryon interprets the source before it becomes a modal field.                                      |
| **Boundary**            | The modal family. `Neumann` behaves like a reflective boundary; `Dirichlet` behaves like a fixed node. |
| **Material Density**    | Scales uniform tracer scattering and absorption without changing acoustic or caustic topology.         |
| **Laser Bending**       | Changes caustic placement and concentration without becoming a general brightness control.             |
| **Caustic controls**    | Set the color, detector gain, and finite-source focus of camera-visible laser caustics.                |
| **Color Mode**          | Whether color is manually chosen or promoted from the audio spectrum.                                  |
| **Rotation Mode**       | Whether the cymatic volume is stationary, audio-driven, or manually spun.                              |
| **Performance Profile** | How Baryon adapts raymarch steps against the frame budget without changing resolution or DPR.          |
| **Camera controls**     | Your viewpoint only. They do not change the underlying modal field.                                    |

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.

## 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.

## 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.

## 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](/docs/public/guides/creative-workflows) for the current capture path and the shape of a future export workflow.