Baudline is a real-time signal analysis tool and an offline time-frequency
browser.  It has a built in tone generation capability and it can play back
audio files with a multitude of effects and filters.

Download the most recent version at  http://www.baudline.com/download.html
This program is beta.

To load a soundfile when opening baudline type:
    baudline  soundfilename
Run "baudline" and a green scrolling window that fills most or all of your
screen will appear.  Hold down the third mouse button and choose Input->Devices
and you are ready to start adjusting your mixer settings.

By default baudline will allocate 25% of your available memory for internal
buffers.  If you are low on RAM or you want to have many instances of
baudline running you might want to run "baudline -mem 4" which tells baudline
to use 4 megabytes of buffer space which is the minimum amount.

Remember all the hidden power of this program is in the third mouse button.

Instructions
------------
The third mouse button pops up the main menu.  Everything is controled from
the main popup menu.

For a list of the command line options type "baudline -help".  These options
are meant as convenience controls and are not necessary for normal operation
of baudline.


Baudline has three modes that it can be in : Record, Pause, or Play.
Use the <pause> key or the first entry in the main popup menu to toggle
between modes in the following manner "Record <---> Pause <--- Play."
Note that the only way to get into the Play mode is the -play command line
option, Alt+P, the play button in the play deck, or choose the menu option
Output->Play_Selection while in the pause mode.  You can't jump from Record
to Play mode without first Pausing.

Baudline performs all its actions around audio data in its wrap around 
scrollable buffer. This audio data can be mono, stereo, or have up to 9
channels.  Recording or Opening a File puts data into this buffer, while
Playing, Saving, or select-pasting takes data out. 

When Recording, the incoming audio goes through minimal pre-processing before
it goes into the wrap around buffer.  This means that baudline can record
audio infinitely but it only remembers the last NN minutes/hours that fit
within its wrap around buffer, look at the Input->Scroll_Control window to
see how this works.  The minimal pre-processing includes analog gain control on
the sound card, DC offset correction, and a digital delay that is useful for
equalizing the difference between different times of arrival.

In the Pause mode the viewable section can be scrolled or zoomed, and
inspection can be done on the slice or sample level.  Also channels can be
remapped and simple reversible operations can be performed such as polarity
switching, frequency inversion, Hilbert filters, inter-channel arithmetic, and
more.  The transform type and color can also be changed.  See the
Output->Channel_Mapping window.  Note that these operations can be performed
and changed on data that is being Recorded.

While Playing, a number of real-time DSP operations can be performed via the
Output->Play_Deck window.  These operations include multi-rate resampling,
pitch shifting, heterodyning (frequency shifting), notch filters, low and
high pass filtering, matrix surround mixing, and more.  In the future you will
be able to perform these DSP operations on the data while in the Pause mode
just like you can in a Sound Editor.


view windows
------------
spectrogram         frequency vs. color shaded time history
spectrum            frequency vs. dB of instantaneous mouse cursor slice
peak smoothing      same as spectrum but with max peak decay or hold
waveform            sample amplitude dB vs. time history
histogram           accumulated probability vs. sample amplitude
average             accumulated (smoothed) frequency vs. time


control windows
---------------
input
    devices         select input devices, sample rate, gain, DC offset, delay
    channel mapping how/what to view, simple ops, transform types and color
    color picker    change RGB gradients for color ramps (shade vs. dB)
    color aperture  change the spectrogram color intensity mapping
    scroll control  change sliding overlap, buffer size, and scroll direction
    open file       load a .wav or .au audio file
    file info       display file stats such as codec, size, comments, ...

output
    devices         choose which channels to out to which cards and control gain
    play deck       play, stop, random access, speed, pitch shift, surround, ...
    tone generator  standard functions (sine, triangle, ...) with modulation
    save as         save buffer selection as a .wav file

process
    drift integrator linear drift rate correction and spectrogram averaging
    equalization    set and correct channel shape
    transform size  set number of FFT points {128 ... 4096}
    windowing       Hanning, Hamming, Blackman, Kaiser, ...

stats               statistics about FPS, counts, drops, stalls, ...
about               blurb info, version number, and linkage to help
zoom control        alternative controls for spectrogram and waveform zooming


mouse buttons
-------------

key             window                  action
----------      ---------------------   ------------------------------------
1st             spectrogram, waveform   selects or locks/unlocks cursor if
                                        clicked without motion
            
                spectrum, average       click and hold crosshairs,
                                        shift and drag delta measurement box

                histogram               click and hold crosshairs

2nd             histogram, average      pastes selected data
                spectrogram, spectrum   pops up harmonic helper bars

3rd             all                     pops up main menu like in the GIMP

wheel           all                     scrolls up and down or
                                        left and right if <Shift> is held

Alt + wheel     all                     zoom in/out on vertical or
                                        horizontal axis if <Shift> is held

Shift + button1 spectrogram, waveform   start or end selection repositioning


keyboard hotkeys
----------------

key             action
-----------     ------------------------------------------------------------
<pause>         toggle between Record, Pause, and Play modes
<home>          jump to top of document
<end>           jump to bottom of document
<page up>       move up a page
<page down>     move down a page
<delete>        clear Average or Histogram capture buffer
<arrow keys>    directional navigation or zoom if <alt> hotkey is held
<F# keys>       selection banks or Average banks
<space>         toggle on/off Average collecting

Alt+R           toggle on/off rulers
Alt+W           close window
Alt+O           open file
Alt+I           file info window
Alt+A           select all
Alt+S           save selection
Alt+P           play selection

Alt+arrow       zoom in that direction
<Shift>         horizontal modifier key, use <Shift>arrow or <Shift><alt>arrow

,               halve playback speed
.               double playback speed
/               toggle playback direction (forward, reverse)

Look for the hot key short cuts in all of the popup menus.  Note that
directional navigation works as expected in the Pause mode, but navigating
while playing is like Fast Forward/Reverse scanning and random access.

If you use Gnome or KDE you might want to change the default hot key modifier
from Alt to the Control key. Try "baudline -modifier ctrl" when you start up.

Remember all the hidden power of baudline is in the third mouse button.
Check out the on-line manual and FAQ at the  http://www.baudline.com  website.

Copyright (c) 2001 by SigBlips
