Audio Shop is a bit like the Instagram of your nightmares. The tiny command-line app lets you manipulate images using Sox — a common audio processing tool — for a horrific effect. Give it an input image and some parameters (you can tweak pitch, loudness, bass, etc) and you’ll see the type of shit you’d only see after a bad trip.
Take this photo of Steve Ballmer, who is arguably the loudest person in tech. It felt only appropriate that I’d crank the “Monkey Man” up to 11.
Then there’s this Burger King worker, from the controversial Google Home advert. Looks friendly, doesn’t he? But watch what happens when we play with the pitch, bass, and overdrive.
Audio Shop also lets you fuck around with echo, too. Do you know what’s worse than one Adam Sandler? Several Adam Sandler’s, all blending into one, like a phantom that deals only in schlocky, unfunny, shit comedy.
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And here’s what happens when you take a photo of the Cheeto Benito himself, and mess with literally every setting in a chaotic and random manner. Still not as terrifying as the original photo, mind you.
Yeah, it’s great fun. You can download it here. It does several dependencies though, so you’ll need to install ImageMagick, SoX, and FFMpeg first.
On Linux, you can do that through the built-in package manager. I haven’t tested it on macOS, but I assume Mac users will need to grab the extra tools through Homebrew. If you’re using Windows, you’ll probably need to go through the Windows Subsystem for Linux route.
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