AUBIOTRACK(1)

🎵 AUBIOTRACK(1) — the aubio User's manual, bestie edition 🎵

okay so. aubiotrack. the beat-tracking girlie of the aubio family. this is from the aubio User's manual and honestly she's iconic for it. let's get into it ✨

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✨ NAME ✨

aubiotrack — a command line tool to extract musical beats from audio signals 🥁💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

aubiotrack source
aubiotrack [[-i] source] [-o sink]
           [-r rate] [-B win] [-H hop]
           [-T time-format]
           [-s sil] [-m]
           [-j] [-N miditap-note] [-V miditap-velo]
           [-v] [-h]

like, just hand her a source and she goes. or fine-tune literally everything, your call 🫶

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

aubiotrack attempts to detect beats — y'know, the time where one would intuitively be tapping his foot. that exact moment. the foot-tap moment. she finds it 👟✨

When started with an input source (-i/--input), the detected beats are given on the console, in seconds. cute, simple, printed right at you 💖

When started without an input source, or with the jack option (-j/--jack), aubiotrack starts in jack mode. main character energy, no file needed 😌

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

This program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (--). A summary of options is included below. buckle up bestie, there's a bunch 🌈

• -i, --input source — Run analysis on this audio file. Most uncompressed and compressed are supported, depending on how aubio was built. (so like, kinda build-dependent, iykyk 🫠)
• -o, --output sink — Save results in this file. The file will be created on the model of the input file. Beats are marked by a short wood-block like sound. 🪵🔊 literally a little wood block, obsessed.
• -r, --samplerate rate — Fetch the input source, resampled at the given sampling rate. The rate should be specified in Hertz as an integer. If 0, the sampling rate of the original source will be used. Defaults to 0.
• -B, --bufsize win — The size of the buffer to analyze, that is the length of the window used for spectral and temporal computations. Defaults to 512.
• -H, --hopsize hop — The number of samples between two consecutive analysis. Defaults to 256.
• -s, --silence sil — Set the silence threshold, in dB, under which the pitch will not be detected. A value of -20.0 would eliminate most onsets but the loudest ones. A value of -90.0 would select all onsets. Defaults to -90.0.
• -m, --mix-input — Mix source signal to the output signal before writing to sink. 🎚️
• -f, --force-overwrite — Overwrite output file if it already exists. no questions, no mercy 💀
• -j, --jack — Use Jack input/output. You will need a Jack connection controller to feed aubio some signal and listen to its output. (yes, you actually need one, not optional 👀)
• -N, --miditap-note — Override note value for MIDI tap. Defaults to 69.
• -V, --miditap-velop — Override velocity value for MIDI tap. Defaults to 65. (yes the flag really is spelled --miditap-velop, not a typo, we stan a quirky queen 💅)
• -T, --timeformat format — Set time format (samples, ms, seconds). Defaults to seconds.
• -h, --help — Print a short help message and exit. the classic escape hatch 🚪
• -v, --verbose — Be verbose. she talks more. that's it, that's the option 🗣️

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🌸 BEAT TRACKING METHODS 🌸

Aubio currently implements one the causal beat tracking algorithm designed by Matthew Davies and described in the following articles:

Matthew E. P. Davies and Mark D. Plumbley. Causal tempo tracking of audio. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), pages 164169, Barcelona, Spain, 2004.

Matthew E. P. Davies, Paul Brossier, and Mark D. Plumbley. Beat tracking towards automatic musical accompaniment. In Proceedings of the Audio Engineering Society 118th Convention, Barcelona, Spain, May 2005.

like, cite your sources bestie, periodt 📚👑

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

aubioonset(1), aubiopitch(1), aubionotes(1), aubioquiet(1), aubiomfcc(1), and aubiocut(1).

the whole friend group fr fr 🫶✨

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🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

This manual page was written by Paul Brossier <piem@aubio.org>.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

(that's the license, keep it intact, don't be weird about it 💜)

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ngl the fact that these options are all real and exact is the whole vibe check — copy them character for character or the terminal will simply not slay 💀

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and that's the page!! written with love for aubio 0.4.9, dated 29 March 2025 — the version and date are right there in the footer of the original, and now they're right here in my little sign-off instead 💖✨🎀