#real-time-audio #command-line

app soundscope

A command-line tool for analyzing audio files and real-time input (FFT, LUFS)

9 stable releases

Uses new Rust 2024

1.4.1 Oct 16, 2025
1.4.0 Oct 6, 2025
1.2.0 Sep 19, 2025

#27 in Audio

Download history 188/week @ 2025-09-01 190/week @ 2025-09-08 127/week @ 2025-09-15 27/week @ 2025-09-22 142/week @ 2025-09-29 212/week @ 2025-10-06 171/week @ 2025-10-13 32/week @ 2025-10-20 5/week @ 2025-10-27

478 downloads per month

MIT license

4.5MB
2K SLoC

Soundscope — a CLI audio file analyzer tool.

Soundscope is a crossplatform CLI tool for analyzing audio files.


✨ Features

  • 🎤 Analysis of both audio files and microphone input in real-time.
  • 📊 FFT Spectrum — view the frequency distribution.
  • 📉 Waveform Display — see the amplitude over time.
  • 🔊 LUFS Metering and True Peak — measure loudness precisely.
  • 🎨 Customizable Theme — change the color scheme to your liking.

🚀 Installation

Using Cargo

cargo install soundscope

or

cargo install --git https://github.com/bananaofhappiness/soundscope

Precompiled Binaries

Grab the latest release for your platform from the Releases page.


🔧 Usage

  • Run the tool using soundscope command
  • Open the explorer by pressing E.
  • Navigate to your audio file using arrow keys or H, J, K, L (Vim-style navigation).
  • Press Enter to select it.
  • Play or pause audio by pressing Space.
  • Turn Mid and Side Frequencies on/of by pressing M and S respectively.
  • Press L to check LUFS and F to check frequencies.
  • Use the right and left arrow keys to move playhead 5 seconds forward or backward.
  • Alternatively, press C to Change input mode from audio file to microphone.
  • In microphone mode, choose Device using D.
  • When you are done, press Q to quit.
  • Change Theme by pressing T.

🎥 Demo Video

Watch the demo on YouTube.


🎨 Creating a custom theme

The theme is set in .theme file which must be placed in {YOUR_CONFIG_DIRECTORY}/soundscope directory. Under the hood it is a simple .toml file. Here is an example theme (which is default for the app) containing all possible variables:

[global]
background = "Black"
# It is default value for everything that is not a background
foreground = "Yellow"
# Color used to highlight corresponding characters
# Like highlighting L in LUFS to let the user know
# that pressing L will open the LUFS meter
highlight = "LightRed"

[waveform]
borders = "Yellow"
waveform = "Yellow"
playhead = "LightRed "# if not set, default is LightRed
# Current playing time and total duration
current_time = "Yellow"
total_duration = "Yellow"
# Buttons like <-, +, -, ->
controls = "Yellow"
# Color of a button when it's pressed
controls_highlight = "LightRed"
labels = "Yellow"

[fft]
borders = "Yellow"
# Frequencies and LUFS tabs text
labels = "Yellow"
axes = "Yellow"
axes_labels = "Yellow"
mid_fft = "Yellow"
side_fft = "LightGreen"

[lufs]
axis = "Yellow"
chart = "Yellow"
# Frequencies and LUFS tabs text
labels = "Yellow"
# Text color on the left
foreground = "Yellow"
# Color of the numbers on the left
numbers = "Yellow"
borders = "Yellow"
background = "Black"
highlight = "LightRed"

[devices]
background = "Black"
foreground = "Yellow"
borders = "Yellow"
highlight = "LightRed"

[explorer]
background = "Black"
borders = "Yellow"
item_foreground = "Yellow"
highlight_item_foreground = "LightRed"
dir_foreground = "Yellow"
highlight_dir_foreground = "LightRed"

[error]
background = "Black"
foreground = "Yellow"
borders = "Yellow"

Only global foreground and global background colors are mandatory. You can pass the HEX color code or use one of the predefined colors below:

- Black
- Red
- Green
- Yellow
- Blue
- Magenta
- Cyan
- Gray
- DarkGray
- LightRed
- LightGreen
- LightYellow
- LightBlue
- LightMagenta
- LightCyan
- White

Color separators -, _, and are supported and names are case insensitive. For example, Light-blue or light_blue or light Blue are all valid. After saving your theme into .theme file and placing it into {YOUR_CONFIG_DIRECTORY}/soundscope, press T to open up the theme selection list and choose yours.


🐛 Known Issues

  • After the playhead reaches the end of the file, the file needs to be reopened in order to be played again. This isn't a bug, but fixing it would be a useful quality‑of‑life (QoL) improvement.
  • It works fine with stereo tracks but was not tested with tracks that have different number of channels.

🛣 Roadmap

  • Microphone input.
  • Zooming the Waveform in and out.
  • Custom themes support.

🤝 Contributing

Pull Requests, Issues and Suggestions are welcome!


📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see LICENSE for details.


☕ Support

If you like soundscope and want to support its development:

Your support helps keep this project alive ❤️

Dependencies

~18–52MB
~892K SLoC