vsound(1)

NAME

vsound - digitally record output of an OSS audio program

SYNOPSIS

vsound [options] [program arguments]

DESCRIPTION

vsound allows you to record the output of any standard OSS

program (one that uses /dev/dsp for sound) without having to mod

ify or recompile the program. It uses the same idea as the es

ddsp wrapper from the Enlightened Sound Daemon (in fact, vsound

is based on esddsp). That is, it preloads a library that inter

cepts calls to open /dev/dsp, and instead returns a handle to a

normal file. It also intercepts ioctl's on that file handle and

logs them, to help convert the audio data from its raw form.

Vsound then uses sox to convert the raw data to the desired file

format.

The upshoot of this is that instead of playing sound to

the sound card in your computer, the data is recorded to a file.

This is similar to if you connected a loopback cable to the line

in and line out jacks on your sound card, but no DA or AD conver

sions take place, so quality is not lost.

One use of vsound is to help convert real audio files to

some other non-proprietary format. Since the real audio format

is proprietary, and all we have is a player, we can use the

vsound to create a wave file like so:

vsound -f output.wav realplay input.rm

This will run realplayer under vsound. You will notice

that no sound is produced while the real audio file is being

played. When the file has completed playing, exit realplayer,

and the raw audio data will be converted to a wave file.

With the help of some other encoder, you would then be

able to convert the wave file to Ogg Vorbis or other formats if

you wanted. This method is probably the one that preserves the

most data during the conversion.

There are probably many other possible uses for vsound.

Just use your imagination.

This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux dis

tribution because the original program does not have a manual

page.

OPTIONS

-a, --autostop=SEC

kill the player after SEC seconds of inactivity

-d, --dspout

enable simulateous output to /dev/dsp and file

-f, --file=FILE

output file name

-h, --help

Show summary of options.

-k, --keep-temps

don't delete temporary files

-n, --no-convert

do not convert the AU file to WAV

-r, --resample

resample the output file to the given sample rate

-s, --stdout

write the intermediate (Sun AU format) file to std

out

-t, --timing

add timing delays to allow recording of streaming

data

-v, --verbose

set to verbose output

-V, --version

show program version

SEE ALSO

sox(1), files in the /usr/share/doc/vsound/ directory.

AUTHOR

First versions by James Henstridge <james@daa.com.au>.

This version is based on the esddsp program by Manish Singh

<yosh@gimp.org> and has been patched by Erik de Castro Lopo

<erikd@zip.com.au> so that it works with the G2 release of the

real media player. This manual page was written by Paul Seelig

<pseelig@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be

used by others).

VSOUND(1)