General Information
===================

This is a development version of BEAST/BSE, the BEdevilled Audio SysTem
and the Bedevilled Sound Engine, the BSE API is not considered to be stable.
The overall goal of this project is to become an audio system that supports
multiple song and sample formats (besides the project specific .bse format)
as well as synthesis networks and allows full fledged editing and
manipulation of those. Sample manipulation includes generation of new
sounds from module networks, based on various kinds of audio synthesis.
More information on the fundamental principles can be found in the
docs/ subdirectory and on the beast website.
Some *.bse files used for testing are also included in the test/
subdirectory.

To get a basic start, you'll also need Gtk+-2.2, a recent version
of the Gtk+-2.2 based GnomeCanvas, Guile-1.6 and the Ogg/Vorbis
Codec libraries.
Though optional, it is a good idea to also have libmad (MPEG audio
decoder library) around when compiling BEAST.
Most distributions already ship these packages,
the sources can be found at:

GnomeCanvas (GNOME-2.0):
	ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/libgnomecanvas/
Gtk+-2.2:
	ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v2.2/
Guile-1.6:
	http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html
Ogg/Vorbis (at least version 1.0):
	http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/download/
MAD (BSE was developed against libmad-0.14.2):
	http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/

The official ftp site for BEAST/BSE is:
  ftp://beast.gtk.org/pub/beast

The official web site for BEAST/BSE is:
  http://beast.gtk.org/

And there is a mailing list as well (beast@gnome.org):
  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/beast/

BEAST also supports the LADSPA plugin API, so various kinds of third
party plugins can be loaded and executed by BEAST. LADSPA plugins are
available from:
	http://www.ladspa.org
and places linked there from. BEAST will look for LADSPA plugins under
lib/ladspa/ of it's own installation prefix, and in the directories
listed in $LADSPA_PATH.


Installation
============

See the file `INSTALL'.
