DBFSD(1)

💖 DBFSD — the manual page, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, so this is dbfsd, and she lives in section 1 of the manual (that's the general commands girlies, we're in the big leagues). she's the DB Fourier Synthesis Daemon and she's literally the backbone of the whole DBMix situation. let's get into it 🫶

---

✨ NAME ✨

dbfsd — DB Fourier Synthesis Daemon 👑

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dbfsd [options]

---

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so. the audio daemon dbfsd is the backend bestie for the DBMix-project. what she does is, like, take several audio streams and connect them and combine them all into one single stream, and she does it using high quality Fourier synthesis. it's giving ✨math✨ and it eats, fr fr.

right now, connections transfer data via pipes. there's a network (socket) connection method being developed but it is not yet included, so don't come for her about it 🙈.

to push audio streams into dbfsd, you use dbcat. and the mixer settings? those get controlled via dbmixer. the girlies work as a team 💅

so dbfsd can actually handle two different output destinations:

• one is the master device, which is usually used for the main output.
• the second one is referred to as the cueing device, which is handy for so-called pre-fade listening.

pre-fade listening means you can check the starting position of the next song, or adjust its pitch, before sending it to the main output. iconic behaviour honestly 🌸

obviously — and this is the important part — for stereo output to both the master and the cueing device, you need two sound cards (or a sound card with two distinct output channels). no cap. that's just the deal.

but! the -e switch offers a way to cue with only a single sound card. the catch is that output gets reduced to mono streams. so, tradeoffs, bestie 😭

---

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -a dev — set master output device to dev. (Default: /dev/dsp.)
• -b dev — set cue output device to dev. (Default: /dev/dsp2.)
• -c — enable cue output. (Default: cueing disabled.)
• -d — print out debug messages to console. (Default: debugging disabled.)
• -e — output cue as left channel of master out. this option also enables cue output even if -c is not set. (Default: cue to both channels of cue output device.)
• -h — print summary of available options.
• -n max — allow at most max input channels. (Default: 4.)
• -o — send master output to stdout. (Default: send output to master output device.)
• -r n — set number of OSS output fragments to n. decreasing this number will reduce latency between, say, starting dbcat, and hearing the results of that action. too low a value, however, will results in drop-outs in the stream. this value can also be adjusted via the preferences dialog in the dbmixer application. (Default: 128.)

not me warning you twice: lowkey latency is cute but drop-outs are not. pick your fighter 💀

• -s n — set number of input channels that should be created as sockets to n. (Default: 0.)
• -v — print version information. (Default: no version information.)

---

✨ FILES ✨

• /tmp/chn_comm — pipe to input channel n. direct use of the pipes is deprecated, use dbcat instead. the pipes expect audio input in unsigned 16bit PCM format at 44.1kHz.

bestie pls just use dbcat, the pipes are giving deprecated energy 🚫

---

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

dbcat(1), dbin(1), dbmixer(1), dbmix(7).

---

✨ AUTHOR ✨

this manual page was written by Daniel Kobras <kobras@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). it is heavily based on DBMix's README file written by Robert Michael S Dean. 🫶

---

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this was the DBFSD(1) manual, dated July 23, 2002 — yes she's an elder but she's still that girl 💜 thanks for reading, mwah 💅✨