Beskope is a music visualizer for Linux that captures the audio currently being played through PipeWire and turns it into a graphical display.
It is designed for users who want the visualizer to behave either like a conventional desktop application or as part of the desktop itself. The latter approach makes Beskope particularly interesting on Wayland systems, where it can occupy a screen edge as a transparent layer instead of taking the form of a normal application window.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Can render the incoming signal as a raw waveform or as a Constant-Q Transform spectrogram.
- Supports high-frame-rate rendering while keeping processor use within reasonable bounds.
- Provides a normal window mode with MPRIS playback controls for compatible media players.
- Offers a desktop mode which uses the wlr-layer-shell protocol to attach a transparent visualizer panel to a screen edge.
- Desktop integration is suitable for compositors and environments with layer-shell support, including KDE, Sway and Hyprland.
- Includes frequency ridgeline, waveform ridgeline and compressed-line presentation styles.
- Lets the number of ridgeline lines be configured to adjust the density of the visualization.
- Supports Wayland display scaling and can switch the normal window into fullscreen mode.
- Stops unnecessary rendering when there is no audio, reducing work when playback is idle.
- Uses RustFFT and a dedicated Constant-Q transform implementation for audio analysis, with wgpu handling graphics rendering.
Website: github.com/jturcotte/beskope
Support:
Developer: Jocelyn Turcotte
License: MIT License
Beskope is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Audio Analyzers | |
|---|---|
| Sonic Visualiser | View and analyse the contents of music audio files |
| Friture | Visualize and analyze live audio data in real-time |
| Spek | Acoustic spectrum analyser |
| projectM | Music visualizer originally based on Milkdrop |
| SongRec | Open source Shazam client |
| Cava | Cross-platform audio visualizer |
| sndpeek | Real-time audio visualization tool (animated, 3D) |
| MasVisGtk | Powerful and comprehensive audio analysis tool |
| Mousai | Simple application that can identify songs similar to Shazam |
| AudMeS | System for audio measurement through a sound card in the PC |
| Cavalier | Audio visualizer based on Cava |
| Open Sound Meter | Measurement application for tuning sound systems in real time |
| Le Biniou | Music visualization / VJing tool |
| Cavasik | Fork of Cavalier |
| GLava | OpenGL audio spectrum visualizer |
| Spek-rs | Acoustic spectrum analyser |
| Soundscope | Analyzing audio data |
| Partiels | Audio analysis tool |
| rtspeccy | Real time spectrum analyzer |
| FMIT | Graphical utility for tuning musical instruments |
| shaq | Bare-bones CLI client for Shazam |
| audioprism | Spectrogram tool for PulseAudio and WAV files |
| spectroterm | Curses based terminal spectrum analyzer |
| Music Radar | Simple application that can identify songs similar to Shazam |
| cli-visualizer | Command line visualizer for MPD, ALSA and PulseAudio |
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