Ecasound

Ecasound is a hard-disk recording and audio processing tool for Unix-like computer operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD.

Ecasound allows flexible interconnection of audio inputs, files, outputs, and effects algorithms, realtime-controllable by builtin oscillators, MIDI, or interprocess communication via GUI front-end. Ecasound supports JACK and LADSPA effects plug-ins.

The team leader is Kai Vehmanen, with dozens of contributors. Kai joined the project in 1995, when it was called wavstat, a simple DSP utility running under OS/2. Available under the GNU General Public License, Ecasound is free software.

User Interface
Ecasound is a command-line tool: it does not include a native graphical interface. Major tasks (recording, mixdown) can be easily performed directly from the command line interface, or by scripts. Several GUI front-ends have been written for it:


 * EcaEnveloptor – Creates envelopes for ecasound objects, requires PyGTK & pyecasound. Non-realtime. By Arto Hamara (13/06/2001)
 * Nama – multi-track recorder, mixer and mastering application. Tk and ReadLine interfaces. By Joel Roth (13/01/2010)
 * EMi (Ecasound Mastering interface) – virtual rack-mount effect. Python-based. By Felix Le Blanc (27/04/2006)
 * GAS (Graphical Audio Sequencer) – multi-track recording and mixing. GTK based. by Luke Tindall. (2001) (?-site down)
 * TkEca – Controls almost all features: multi-track recorder/mixer. Tcl/Tk interface. By Luis Gasparotto (29/01/2004)
 * Visecas – Preserves Ecasound semantics: edits chains & audio objects, not tracks/regions. GTK+-based. By Jan Weil (22/01/2004)