Hi firewireflow,
I have attached an option how I would do it. With XPresso, I do not see a way. Let me explain, the idea of MoGraph is to produce “Clones”, which can be changed in PSR (position, scale, rotation) as well color—typically.
If a child under a Cloner Object has for example an XPresso Tag or a Deformer, either way, if will be “stored/created” one time and then produced multiple times. To overcome this, we use the Blend function, with an effector set to “Modify Clones”. With that we produce one clone, with different states of the child(s). There are two or more states under the Cloner, between or among those the blend will normally happen.
This Cloner Object becomes then a child of a new Cloner Object, to produce (finally) the multiple amount of clones. Based on their position, these clones get different values from the effector (e.g., via falloff) and change so—and individual appearance is produced, kind of.
This doesn’t work with the Sound Effector. So we need to do a little trick here. As you introduced the best way already, using the colors, I like to show you my way of using the colors. Cumbersome, considered that the information is already available… (the Camera-Shader comes to mind, but isn’t working for that so far I know…) Anyway, I set up your clones so I can render out a gray representation of the sound. This movie is then applied to the Single clone/modify set up. I did it here on a cube (invisible) to define the space where the texture sits (Flat-projection in this case).
With this movie I can now define in space where and when a clone has to bend. After that information is applied, you can add other options to move the clones around, if needed. You might set up a scene file just to produce these visual representations of the sound. It might work faster that way.
As this is a tricky set up, and certainly complex on first sight, try it, ask if you miss a point in my explanation. Once you get the idea, it is simple, but again, it might feel awkward at first.
My best wishes
