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

fische                                             April 2010                                          FISCHE(1)