LinuxMusicians

I'm sure this must be very obvious but I haven't been able to do it.

I've started to play around with Lebiniou lately, and I'm trying to get some kind of effect where the visuals have some relation to the music being played, maybe like those "audio visualizers" we used to have in the 90s, or in any other way.

I've gone through the documentation but not been able to succeed so far. In the manual there is a step by step tutorial called "your first sequence", which I've followed, and at some point it says:

Finally, add a plugin that reacts to the sound, for example, the "X oscillo stereo" plugin.

After applying this plugin, I try to play some music (via VLC if that matters), and nothing happens. There are some shaky lines that must be the "oscillo", but their behavior isn't influenced by the sound. You stop the music and they just keep doing their thing in the same manner.

Assuming that maybe I had to set the source of sound, following the man page I then tried:
No luck. Then I tried directing it to a sound file:
No observable effect either (and the music didn't play).

I'm sure it's a very trivial thing once you know how to use Lebiniou, could someone please tell me how this sound channeling thing works (if what I want to do is possible), maybe share some command line options so that I get the general idea? Thank you.

I use the program only with jackd. https://wiki.biniou.net/doku.php?id=en:input-plugins

Nachei wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:53 pm After applying this plugin, I try to play some music (via VLC if that matters), and nothing happens. There are some shaky lines that must be the "oscillo", but their behavior isn't influenced by the sound. You stop the music and they just keep doing their thing in the same manner.

Assuming that maybe I had to set the source of sound, following the man page I then tried:

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lebiniou -i alsa

I suspect that with alsa input it listens default mic input, or something like that. I have used jack.

Nachei wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:53 pm No luck. Then I tried directing it to a sound file:

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export LEBINIOU_SNDFILE=/path/to/song.ogg
lebiniou -i sndfile &

No observable effect either (and the music didn't play).

I think soundfile needs to be wav, and lebiniou does not output that audio. Soundfile is used when you want to generate video to file.

My secret weapon is pavucontrol (pulseaudio volume control). You can find LeBiniou in the Recording tab. There you should switch to Monitor (of your soundcard). Optionally, you can boost the value up to 150% for better effect. No additional LeBiniou configuration or sound server is needed.

PS: The same approach can be applied to ProjectM, probably other visualizers as well.

Thank you everybody for your responses, all highly interesting and informative. Changing the parameter to "monitor" in Pavucontrol seems to have done the trick (the oscillo is now a flat line when no music is playing, and starts to move when there is).

This approach has the advantage of not needing to add parameters when starting the program. I tried using it with -i jackd but, alas, in my rt distribution, Lebiniou freezes, and also for some reason in the Lebiniou that got installed, X-Oscillo didn't appear in the list. Anyways, I can make do with this and probably a screen capture program...

By the way, besides oscillo, which is self explanatory, is there a way to know which other plugins react to sound? Or you have to test them all and find out by trial and error?