Csound Shell for BeOS

Csound Shell for BeOS

Csound Shell for BeOS
	Introduction
	Jobs
	Windows
Menus
Environment Variables
Sound Synthesis
Heterodyne Filter Analysis
Linear Predictive Analysis
Short-Time Fourier Analysis
Fourier Analysis
Job Execution
BeOS Server
MIDI Support

Introduction

The Csound Shell is a graphical UI front-end for the Csound music synthesis program. Its main features are

Access to all of Csound, including the analysis utilities.
Ability to save and load sets of options and parameters.
Full use of BeOS multithreading; while one job is being run, you can already set up (and indeed start) the next one.

The Csound features of realtime sound I/O, graphical displays, and X/Y coordinate input are provided by the Csound BeOS Server, which is normally started automatically when you first run the Csound Shell. If the server cannot be started, these features will not be available; an alert will inform you if this happens.

Jobs

At the heart of the Csound Shell is the concept of a job. A job is simply a collection of command-line options and parameters which will be passed to Csound when the job is executed. Jobs can be saved in files. There are several different job types:

Synthesis Jobs contain settings for running Csound in its normal mode, where it synthesizes sounds from its input data.
Heterodyne Filter Analysis Jobs let Csound run the hetro analysis utility, which generates input files usable by the adsyn opcode.
Linear Predictive Analysis Jobs let Csound run the lpanal analysis utility, which generates input files for the lpread opcode.
Short-Time Fourier Analysis Jobs run the pvanal analysis utility program, which produces short-time Fourier transform data for phase vocoder resynthesis (using the pvoc opcode).
Fourier Analysis Jobs also perform Fourier analysis (using cvanal), for producing fast convolutions with the convolve opcode.
An Environment Job contains values for the environment variables controlling Csound.

Windows

Every open job in the Csound Shell has an associated job window which displays controls for modifying the contents of the job. If there are many parameters in the job, an additional options window is provided to reduce visual complexity.

A job window contains a menu bar and a set of buttons controlling the execution of the job. Options windows contain only controls. Closing a job window discards the job, but closing an options window merely hides the window.

Each control in a window corresponds to a single component of the job associated with the window. Depending on the component's type, different kinds of controls are used:

Component Type Control

Filename Text entry field

Numeric value Text entry field

Boolean switch Check box

1-of-N selection Set of radio buttons

Text entry fields can be mandatory (a value is required for executing the job) or optional. As long as any mandatory text entry field has not been assigned a value, the command button used to start execution will stay disabled. If an optional text entry field has not been assigned a value, the corresponding command line option will not be passed to Csound when the job is executed. Mandatory text entry fields are distinguished by their different background color.

Files can be dragged from a Tracker window to a window in the Csound Shell. A file whose MIME type or filename extension is recognized will cause the corresponding text entry field to be updated with the file's name, regardless of the location where it was dropped. A file whose type or extension is unknown will cause a text entry field to be updated only if it is dropped within the space occupied by the field.