Methods and systems are described that assist media players in rendering visualizations and synchronizing those visualizations with audio samples. In one embodiment, a system comprises one or more audio sources configured to provide audio samples that are to be rendered by a media player. An audio sample pre-processor is communicatively linked with the one or more audio sources and is configured to receive and pre-process audio samples before the samples are rendered. The pre-processing provides characterizing data associated with each sample and derived from the audio samples. One or more effects are configured to receive the characterizing data and use the characterizing data to render a visualization that is synchronized with an audio sample that is being rendered by the media player.