scosound(X1)

scosound -- graphical audio control utility

Synopsis

/usr/X/bin/scosound [-option...] [audio_file]

Description

scosound is an audio playback and record utility. It can be used as an X-based graphical utility or from the command line.

Entered without options or with only an audio file name, scosound starts in graphical mode. It provides a window consisting of the following three areas:

Menu bar

File and Options menus that give access to all scosound features:

File selections allow you to open new or existing sound files, copy sound files, and exit the application.
Options includes selections for Recording Preferences.

Recording preferences area

Displays the current set of recording preferences set under the Options menu.

Control buttons

Buttons that control playback and recording of audio files: Stop, Pause, Play, Record.

NOTE: A ``recording overrun'' can result if the sound source generates data faster than the computer can process it. This generally happens when the sample rate and/or sample size are set too high. If this happens, you might experience audio driver buffer overflows and missing audio sections in the recorded file. These error conditions are not usually detected by the audio driver, although you might see console error messages. Consult your sound card documentation for more information about your hardware's limits.

Options

The following options are also available when starting scosound from the command line:

-audiodevice | -audio | -device device

audio device; for example, /dev/dsp0 or /dev/audio

-fileformat | -file fileformat

file format; the default is wav. Available values are:

Microsoft^® WAVE format
Creative Labs^® VOC sound format
Sun^®/NeXT^® -law (mu-law) sound format
raw data
Macintosh^® sound format

-dataformat | -data dataformat

sample size and encoding method; the default is pcm8. Available values are:

pcm8: common unsigned 8-bit linear (Pulse Modulation Control)
u8: unsigned 8-bit linear
s8: signed 8-bit linear
pcm16: common signed little endian 16-bit linear (Pulse Modulation Control)
s16b: signed big endian 16-bit linear
s16l: signed little endian 16-bit linear
u16b: unsigned big endian 16-bit linear
u16l: unsigned little endian 16-bit linear
mulaw | ulaw: common -law (mu-law) 8-bit logarithmic
alaw: A-law 8-bit logarithmic
ima_adpcm: IMA Adaptive Delta Pulse Control Modulation
mpeg: MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group) standard

-comment string

comment; the default is "". This can be any string to be embedded in the file's comment field, if supported by the file format.

-samplerate | -rate rate

frequency with which the input stream is sampled (in Hz); default is 22050. Available values are:

8000: a telephony standard often used with ulaw and alaw encoding
11025: 25% of the CD sampling rate or 50% of the Macintosh rate
16000: used by compression standards such as G.722
22050: the Macintosh sampling rate or 50% of the CD rate
32000: used in several digital broadcast standards
44100: the CD sampling rate
48000: the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) sampling rate

au file formats usually take sample rates of 8000Hz; wav file formats usually take 11025, 22050, or 44100Hz.

-gain percent

input gain in percent (an integer value from 0 to 100); the default is 75

-volume percent

output volume in percent (an integer value from 0 to 100); the default is 75

-channels channels

number of channels, where 1 is mono and 2 is stereo; the default is 1

-mono

same as -channels 2

-stereo

same as -channels 1

-autoplay

automatically initiate playing the file

Files

/usr/X/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoSound

References

mixer(1), vplay(1), vrec(1)

``Configuring audio adapters'' in the UnixWare 7 System Handbook