If you play a local MP3 or a Deezer stream, you’ll notice pulsing white bars at the bottom of the lyrics screen. That’s the Live Equalizer.
1. How it works
These bars aren’t a canned animation. They react to the music as it plays.
PlanetMusic listens to the sound and splits it up by pitch, from low to high. Each bar stands for one part of that range, and it rises and falls with how strong that part of the sound is. The loudest low-end hits are exaggerated a little, so the bass really stands out.
NOTE ON YOUTUBE: You won’t see the equalizer when you play YouTube sources. YouTube plays its audio inside its own locked-down player, and browsers don’t let other sites listen in on audio from a player like that. It’s a security rule that keeps sites from grabbing data they shouldn’t, so there’s nothing for the bars to react to.
2. Turning it off
If you find the equalizer distracting, or it’s draining your laptop’s battery, go to the Settings tab and turn on Disable Animations. The equalizer stops working while that setting is on.
When the bars can react
The visualizer needs an audio signal the page can analyze. PlanetMusic currently enables the live frequency display for local audio and Deezer playback; YouTube runs in an embedded player that does not expose its audio stream to the visualizer. A quiet signal, a paused track, or a source transition can therefore leave the bars idle even though the canvas itself is visible.
The bars are a visual response, not a promise that a source is playing correctly or a measurement tool for mastering. If animation is not useful, turn on Disable Animations in Settings; the equalizer renderer stops while that preference is enabled. Switching to another supported source can help distinguish a source limitation from an audio playback problem.