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*** ecasound - README                                               ***
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 What is it?
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Ecasound is a text-mode sound processing program that can do
various tasks from basic editing and effect processing to multitrack
recording. Although the user interface may seem a bit cryptic, one of 
the main design goals of this project has been to create an
easy-to-use, creative utility for recording and mixing purposes.
Because of the simple interface, batch files can be used to automate 
complex editing tasks. qtecasound is an X interface to ecasound. 

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 Why?
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I've programmed ecasound for my own recording purposes. The first 
versions ran under IBM Os/2. I used them for finalizing my analog 
4-track recordings. My 4-track was a nice tool, but it had its limits.
So eventually I started to use Windows-based multitrack software. I
still used ecasound for fx processing and finalizing. When I 
ported ecasound to Linux, a lot of the code was rewritten from 
scratch. During this I also added multitrack capabilities
to ecasound. It took a lot of work, but in the end I was able to 
get rid of all my Windows recording software. Nowadays I use 
ecasound for all my music projects. Because of this, I also 
continue to improve and develop ecasound.

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 Installing 
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First of all, you should first try to use the binary-rpm release.
It's probably the easiest and the most straigthforward way to 
install this software. 

If you need to compile ecasound, you'll find detailed instructions 
from the file 'INSTALL'.

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 Documentation 
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- man pages (incomplete)
	- ecasound
	- qtecasound
- HTML docs (incomplete)
	- Documentation/index.html
- command line help (most up-to-date source)
	- (qt)ecasound -h 

Probably the best place to start is the examples section of 
the HTML-documentation (Documentation/examples.html).

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 Requirements
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To run ecasound, you need...:

- POSIX compliant UNIX system; I use Linux 2.2.x, glibc 2.1.x
- POSIX threads; I use linuxthreads 0.7 (libpthread)
- for soundcard input/output: OSS drivers (Lite version 
  should also work, but is not tested)
- for mp3 support, mpg123 (input) and lame (output) packages

To compile ecasound, you also need...:

- standard C++ build environment; I use egcs, libstdc++
  (STL and exceptions need to be supported)
- GNU make, automake and autoconf packages

To run qtecasound, you need...:

- qt 2.x development environment and runtime libraries

To compile qtecasound, you also need...:

- qt 2.x development environment

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 Web sites
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http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/ecasound/
	- ecasound home site

http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/sculpscape.html
	- Sculpscape, music recorded and mixed with ecasound

http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/
	- my personal home page

http://internet.roadrunner.com/~mt/mp3/
	- lame mp3 encoder

http://dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de/~olli/mpg123/
	- mpg123 mp3 decoder

http://www.troll.no/dl/
	- qt libraries

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 Author 
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Kai Vehmanen - mailto:kaiv@wakkanet.fi

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 Licensing/distribution policy
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Copyright (C) 1997-1999 Kai Vehmanen

Ecasound is freely distributable according to the terms of the 
GNU General Public License (see the file 'COPYING').

This program is distributed without any warranty. See the file 
'COPYING' for details. 

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