Virtual Light Machine

The Virtual Light Machine (VLM) is a lightsynth developed by Jeff Minter. It was installed into a number of electronics, including the Atari Jaguar CD and Nuon DVD players. It was also used by Kraftwerk on their seminal electronic music album Autobahn.

VLM, basically put, is very similar to what would later be seen in Winamp visualizations. When an audio CD is put into a VLM compatible device, the VLM loads, manifesting visualizations which appear on the screen that change with the music.

VLM versions

The VLM used in the Nuon players is VLM-2 because Jeff Minter has made many types of VLM for different systems. For example, VLM-1 is the one which the Atari Jaguar uses. VLM-3 was the basis of Unity, which was in turn upgraded to form the basis of Neon.

VLM in Nuon DVD players

Every Nuon player used the same type of VLM except every player displays only a certain amount of VLM effects. The Toshiba player only has 8 VLM effects. The Samsung DVDN-2000 can display more effects than the Toshiba player. The VLM for the Samsung DVD-2000 has a higher resolution than the Toshiba player. The Samsung DVDN-501 has the most VLM effects, it has about 150 effects but these effects have a lower resolution than the Samsung DVDN-2000.

There are 2 RCA Nuon DVD players that also have VLM but these RCA players are missing many of the Nuon features that the Toshiba and Samsung players contain.