beast - Graphical program to simulate audio synthesis and compose music.

beast [OPTIONS] [FILES...]

BEAST is the BEdevilled Audio SysTem. It is a music composition and modular synthesis application released as free software under the GNU GPL and GNU LGPL.

BEAST comes with various synthesis modules which can be arranged in networks for modular synthesis. It is capable of monophonic and polyphonic voice processing, provides MIDI sequencer functionality and supports external sequencer sources. A huge set of extra modules is available through the support for LADSPA (Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API) plugins.

BEAST's underlying sound engine BSE also comes with a scheme scripting extension which allows for advanced non-interactive processing via bsesh(1) and creation of additional GUI functionality for BEAST.

BEAST follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`-').

CB--skinrc[=FILENAME] Read skin resources from FILENAME.

CB--print-dir[=RESOURCE] Print the directory for a specific resource (e.g. `plugins' or `images'). Giving just CB--print-dir without an extra argument causes BEAST to print the list of available resources.

CB--devel Enrich the GUI with hints usefull for (script) developers

CB-h, --help Shows a brief help message.

CB-v, --version Prints out BEAST and component versions and file paths.

CB-n=NICELEVEL Execute with priority NICELEVEL, this option only takes effect for the root suid wrapper "beast".

CB-N Disables renicing to execute with existing priority.

CB--display=DISPLAY X server for the GUI; see X(1).

CB--bse-latency=USECONDS Set the allowed synthesis latency for BSE in milliseconds.

CB--bse-mixing-freq=FREQUENCY Set the desired synthesis mixing frequency in Hz.

CB--bse-control-freq=FREQUENCY Set the desired control frequency in Hz, this should be much smaller than the synthesis mixing frequency to reduce CPU load. The default value of approximately 1000 Hz is usually a good choice.

CB--bse-pcm-driver DRIVER-CONF

CB-p DRIVER-CONF This options results in an attempt to open the PCM driver DRIVER-CONF when playback is started. Multiple options may be supplied to try a variety of drivers and unless DRIVER-CONF is specified as `auto', only the drivers listed by options are used. Each DRIVER-CONF consists of a driver name and an optional comma seperated list of arguments attached to the driver withan equal sign, e.g.: CB-p oss=/dev/dsp2,rw -p auto

CB--bse-midi-driver DRIVER-CONF

CB-m DRIVER-CONF This option is similar to the CB--bse-pcm-driver option, but applies to MIDI drivers and devices. It also may be specified multiple times and features an `auto' driver.

CB--bse-driver-list Produce a list of all available PCM and MIDI drivers and available devices.

CB-- Stop argument processing, interpret all remaining arguments as file names.

Development Options:

CB--debug=KEYS Enable certain verbosity stages.

CB--debug-list List possible debug keys.

CB-:[flags] This option enables or disables various debugging specific flags. Use of CB-: is not recommended, as the supported flags may change between versions and cause possibly harmful misbehaviour.

Gtk+ Options:

CB--gtk-debug=FLAGS Gtk+ debugging flags to enable.

CB--gtk-no-debug=FLAGS Gtk+ debugging flags to disable.

CB--gtk-module=MODULE Load additional Gtk+ modules.

CB--gdk-debug=FLAGS Gdk debugging flags to enable.

CB--gdk-no-debug=FLAGS Gdk debugging flags to disable.

CB--g-fatal-warnings Make warnings fatal (abort).

CB--sync Do all X calls synchronously.

bsesh(1), sfidl(1)

Document Revised: Wed May 25 23:38:26 2005