Ecasound

Ecasound
Developer(s)	Kai Vehmanen
Initial release	1995
Stable release	2.9.3 (January 11, 2020; 4 years ago) [±]
Preview release	None [±]
Written in	C++
Operating system	Cross-platform
Platform	IA32, PowerPC, ARM, SPARC
Available in	?
Type	hard-disk recording; audio processing
License	GPL-2.0-or-later
Website	http://nosignal.fi/ecasound/index.php

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)