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

This is an ALPHA version of BEAST/BSE, the bedevilled audio system and
the bedevilled sound engine.
BEAST is currently in development stage, the BSE API has not fully
stabelized yet.
The overall goal of this project is to get 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 them. Sample manipulation includes generation of new
sounds from module networks, based on various forms 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+-2.0, a recent version
of the Gtk+-2.0 based GnomeCanvas, Guile-1.4 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, their sources can be found at:

GnomeCanvas (GNOME-2.0):
	ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/libgnomecanvas/
Gtk+-2.0:
	ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v2.0/
Guile-1.4:
	http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html
Ogg/Vorbis (at least version 1.0rc3):
	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 finally there's a mailing list as well:
  beast@beast.gtk.org
send an email to timj@beast.gtk.org to get subscribed.

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

See the file `INSTALL'.
