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*** ecasound - README                                               ***
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 What is it?
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Ecasound is a software package designed for multitrack audio
processing. It can be used for simple tasks like audio playback, 
recording and format conversions, as well as for multitrack effect 
processing, mixing, recording and signal recycling. Ecasound supports 
a wide range of audio inputs, outputs and effect algorithms. Several
open-source audio packages, like for instance ALSA, OSS, mpg123, lame, 
libaudiofile and MikMod, are directly supported. One of the advantages 
of ecasound's chain-based design is that effects can easily be 
combined both in series and in parallel. Oscillators and MIDI-CCs 
can be used for controlling effect parameters. Included user-interfaces 
are ecasound - a versatile console mode interface, qtecasound - 
a Qt-based X-interface and various command-line utils suitable for 
batch processing.

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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, the file 'INSTALL' contains detailed 
instructions.

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 Documentation 
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- user's guide
- programmers guide
- man pages
	- ecasound(1)
	- qtecasound(1)
	- ecatools(1)
	- ecasound-iam(1)
	- ecasoundrc(5)
- command line help (most up-to-date source)
	- (qt)ecasound -h

Probably the best place to start is the examples section of 
ecasound 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, comes with glibc)
- for soundcard input/output: OSS, OSS/Lite or ALSA drivers
- for mp3 support, mpg123 (input) and lame (output) packages
- for .aiff and .au/.snd support, libaudiofile (SGI audio file) library

To compile ecasound, you also need...:

- standard C++ build environment; I use egcs 2.95.2
  (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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Ecasound home site
- http://www.wakkanet.fi/ecasound/

Distribution packages
- http://ecasound.seul.org/download/

Ecasound link page (external packages needed by ecasound, etc)
- http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/ecasound/links.html

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

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 About stable and development versions
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Although publically released versions are called stable, this is not 
a guarantee of any kind. I use a small test-bench to check that all 
essential features are working and I use these versions myself, but 
that's it. And note that this isn't a temporary solution. As ecasound 
is open-source software, it will become more stable as more people 
start using it and bugs are found. So join the fun! :) 
	 
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 Author 
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Kai Vehmanen - mailto:kaiv@wakkanet.fi

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 Credits
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Dyson, John S. - advanced compressor (-eca)
Laydier, Antoine aka SMF - layer.cpp (interprets mp3 headers)

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 Acknowledgements / Thanks to 
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Barton-Davis, Paul - Quasimodo and Hdr have given me a lot of ideas
Endersz, Viktor - for sending me the adv.compressor source code!
Hall, Jeremy - extensive testing
Hamara, Arto - ecasound logo, lots of great ideas!
Philips, Dave - Linux Sound+MIDI keeps Linux audio going strong!
Petit, Bertrand - helped with POSIX-compatibility issues

all LAD members - always a great source of inspiration

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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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