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PW-CAT(1) General Commands Manual PW-CAT(1)
NAME
pw-cat - Play and record media with PipeWire
SYNOPSIS
pw-cat [options] [FILE | -]
pw-play [options] [FILE | -]
pw-record [options] [FILE | -]
pw-midiplay [options] [FILE | -]
pw-midirecord [options] [FILE | -]
pw-dsdplay [options] [FILE | -]
DESCRIPTION
pw-cat is a simple tool for playing back or capturing raw or encoded
media files on a PipeWire server. It understands all audio file formats
supported by libsndfile for PCM capture and playback.
It understands standard MIDI files for playback and recording. This
tool will not render MIDI files, it will simply make the MIDI events
available to the graph. You need a MIDI renderer such as qsynth,
timidity or a hardware MIDI rendered to hear the MIDI.
DSD playback is supported with the DSF file format. This tool will only
work with native DSD capable hardware and will produce an error when no
such hardware was found.
When the FILE is - input and output will be from STDIN and STDOUT
respectively.
OPTIONS
-h | --help
Show help.
--version
Show version information.
-v | --verbose
Verbose operation.
-R | --remote=NAME
The name the remote instance to connect to. If left unspecified,
a connection is made to the default PipeWire instance.
-p | --playback
Playback mode. Read data from the specified file, and play it
back. If the tool is called under the name pw-play or
pw-midiplay this is the default.
-r | --record
Recording mode. Capture data and write it to the specified file.
If the tool is called under the name pw-record or pw-midirecord
this is the default.
-m | --midi
MIDI mode. FILE is a MIDI file. If the tool is called under the
name pw-midiplay or pw-midirecord this is the default. Note
name pw-dsdplay this is the default. Note that this program
will not render the DSD audio. You need a DSD capable device to
play DSD content or this program will exit with an error.
--media-type=VALUE
Set the media type property (default Audio/Midi depending on
mode). The media type is used by the session manager to select
a suitable target to link to.
--media-category=VALUE
Set the media category property (default Playback/Capture
depending on mode). The media type is used by the session
manager to select a suitable target to link to.
--media-role=VALUE
Set the media role property (default Music). The media type is
used by the session manager to select a suitable target to link
to.
--target=VALUE
Set a node target (default auto). The value can be:
auto Automatically select (Default)
0 Don't try to link this node
<id> The object.serial or the node.name of a target node
--latency=VALUE[units]
Set the node latency (default 100ms)
The latency determines the minimum amount of time it takes for a
sample to travel from application to device (playback) and from
device to application (capture).
The latency determines the size of the buffers that the
application will be able to fill. Lower latency means smaller
buffers but higher overhead. Higher latency means larger buffers
and lower overhead.
Units can be s for seconds, ms for milliseconds, us for
microseconds, ns for nanoseconds. If no units are given, the
latency value is samples with the samplerate of the file.
-P | --properties=VALUE
Set extra stream properties as a JSON object.
-q | --quality=VALUE
Resampler quality. When the samplerate of the source or
destination file does not match the samplerate of the server,
the data will be resampled. Higher quality uses more CPU. Values
between 0 and 15 are allowed, the default quality is 4.
--rate=VALUE
The sample rate, default 48000.
--channels=VALUE
The number of channels, default 2.
FRH, TFLC, TFRC, TSL, TSR, LLFR, RLFE, BC, BLC, BRC
--format=VALUE
The sample format to use. One of: u8, s8, s16 (default), s24,
s32, f32, f64.
--volume=VALUE
The stream volume, default 1.000. Depending on the locale you
have configured, "," or "." may be used as a decimal seperator.
Check with locale command.
AUTHORS
The PipeWire Developers
<https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/issues>; PipeWire is
available from https://pipewire.org
SEE ALSO
PipeWire(1), pw-mon(1),
PW-CAT(1)