NAME

       fische - standalone sound visualisation

SYNOPSIS

       fische [options]

OPTIONS

       -D --driver driver

              Use  the  specified  audio input driver. Presently alsa, pulse, portaudio and dummy
              are supported.

       -d --device device

              device names the pcm capture device to get the sound data from.  On  most  systems,
              the  default  will do just fine. This Option is ignored with the PulseAudio driver.
              The PortAudio driver knows the special device help, which will spit out a  list  of
              all known devices.

       -g --geometry XxY

              X and Y specify the width and height of the animation. Defaults to 800x400.

       -v --virtual XxY

              X and Y specify the width and height of the application window. Use this to prevent
              your computer  from  trying  to  switch  to  non-existent  fullscreen  resolutions.
              CAUTION: when specifying a virtual geometry, set the actual geometry FIRST!

       -f --fullscreen

              Start fische in fullscreen mode.

       -e --extra-nervous

              Start fische in nervous mode.

       -s --fps fps

              fps  specifies  the  target  frames  per second. The default, 30, is what fische is
              designed for

       -1 --single

              Use only one CPU, even if there are more available

       --exit-on-mouseevent

              Exit when a mouse button is clicked (useful mainly on touchscreens)

       -n --nowrite

              Do not update the configuration file with the last known working configuration.

       -h --help

              Display a basic help message.

RUNTIME CONTROLS

       At runtime, press P to pause, F to toggle fullscreen mode, N to toggle nervosity  and  ESC
       to quit. With the --exit-on-mouseevent flag, fische does exactly that.

KNOWN ISSUES

       PortAudio is currently slow on Linux. If able, use a different driver.

       On  Windows,  the  actual  frame rate is often quite different from the specified one. The
       actual rate is shown after exit. Use the -s flag to increase it to about 30.

TROUBLESHOOTING (Linux only)

       If you get an error like "X Error of failed request: BadValue..."

              Try to start fische with the -v or --virtual flags  and  set  X/Y  to  values  that
              correspond  to a fullscreen resolution that you know exists. For example: fische -g
              1400x700 -v 1400x1050

       If fische starts, but won't react to sound

              First of all, try a different input driver. If you are lucky, this  already  solves
              your problem.

              If not, you now have to choose which driver you would like to get working:

              pulse:  Fische  opens  the default source as set with pavucontrol or similar tools.
              For example, if you would like to visualize "what's playing", set the corresponding
              "monitor of output XYZ" device as default.

              alsa:  You  might  be using the wrong ALSA device. By default, fische tries to open
              the "default" device. It should be correctly configured on most systems,  but  with
              some   soundcards   you  need  complex  ALSA  configuration  to  achieve  recording
              capabilities - look into the  ALSA  documentation.  For  example,  soundcards  with
              ICE1712  chips  record internally produced sound on channels 10 and 11 instead of 0
              and 1.

              alsa: Recording might not be enabled.  Check  with  "alsamixer"  or  another  mixer
              application. If you are trying to visualize sounds produced by an audio player, you
              must enable recording of what's called "PCM" on most  cards.  For  external  input,
              record "Line In", and so on...

              alsa:  Your  sound  card might not support recording of your chosen source. In this
              case, you are in bad luck. Most notably, many C-Media  based  cards  do  not  allow
              recording  while  SPDIF  out  is in use. You can try a setup using an "aloop" dummy
              card - but that process is far beyond the scope of this man  page,  and  with  most
              distributions, it requires kernel or ALSA re-compilation. However, in this case the
              PulseAudio input driver might still give you the desired results.

FILES

       $HOME/.fischerc - automatically updated on clean exit.

SEE ALSO

       Runtime control documentation, troubleshooting information and FAQs in the README

AUTHOR

       This manual page was written by Marcel Ebmer fische@26elf.at.  Permission  is  granted  to
       copy,  distribute  and/or  modify  this document under the terms of the GNU General Public
       License, Version 2, or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation