Cava is a bar spectrum audio visualizer for terminal (ncurses) or desktop (SDL).
This program is not intended for scientific use. It’s written to look responsive and aesthetic when used to visualize music.
Cava is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Cross-platform support – runs under Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, and Windows.
Website: github.com/karlstav/cava
Support:
Developer: Karl Stavestrand
License: MIT License

cava is written in C. Learn C 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 |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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