fische - standalone sound visualisation
Contents
Files
$HOME/.fischerc - automatically updated on clean exit.
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.
Name
fische - standalone sound visualisation
Options
-D--driverdriver
Use the specified audio input driver. Presently alsa, pulse, portaudio and dummy are supported.
-d--devicedevicedevice 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--geometryXxYX and Y specify the width and height of the animation. Defaults to 800x400.
-v--virtualXxYX 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:whenspecifyingavirtualgeometry,settheactualgeometryFIRST!-f--fullscreen
Start fische in fullscreen mode.
-e--extra-nervous
Start fische in nervous mode.
-s--fpsfpsfps 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.
See Also
Runtime control documentation, troubleshooting information and FAQs in the README
Synopsis
fische [options]
Troubleshooting (Linux Only)
If you get an error like "XErroroffailedrequest: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'treacttosound
First of all, tryadifferentinputdriver. 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 PulseAudioinputdrivermightstillgiveyouthedesiredresults.