The PulseAudio method however works perfectly on my Pi. I was able to make this work on my laptop (an Asus UX31 running Ubuntu), but I had no luck with the ALSA method on my Raspberry Pi (Rasbian) with an USB DAC. Look at the included example file example_files/etc/nf on how to use the multi channel. In order to play audio on the loopback interface and your actual interface you must make use of the ALSA multi channel.

Playing the audio through your Loopback interface makes it possible for cava to capture it, but there will be no sound in your speakers.

You can replace '1' with whatever makes most sense in your audio setup. To keep it from being loaded as the first soundcard add the line options snd-aloop index=1 to '/etc/modprobe.d/nf', this will load it at '1'. To make it persistent across boot add the line snd-aloop to '/etc/modules'. Hopefully your aplay -l should now contain a loopback interface. To create a loopback interface simply run: If you want to capture audio straight fom the output (not just mic or line-in), you must create an ALSA loopback interface, then output the audio simultaneously to both the loopback and your normal interface. Not sure how to get the pulseaudio dev files for other distros than debian/ubuntu or if they are bundled in pulseaudio.įor better a better visual experience ncurses is also recomended.Īll the requirements can be installed easily in all major distros:ĭebian Buster or higher/Ubuntu 18.04 or higher:ĪLSA can be difficult because there is no native way to grab audio from an output. To more easly grab audio from your system pulseaudio, alsa, sndio or portaudio dev files are recommended (depending on what audio system you are using). Only FFTW and the other build tools are actually required for CAVA to compile, but this will only give you the ability to read from fifo files. ncursesw dev files (bundled in ncurses in arch).autoconf-archive (needed for setting up OpenGL).Installing From Source Installing Build Requirements It's written to look responsive and aesthetic when used to visualize music. This program is not intended for scientific use.

Cava is a bar spectrum audio visualizer for terminal (ncurses) or desktop (SDL).

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