vban - Linux command-line VBAN tools

© 2015 Benoît Quiniou - quiniouben[at]yahoo(.)fr

vban project is an open-source implementation of VBAN protocol. VBAN is a simple audio over UDP protocol proposed by VB-Audio, see VBAN Audio webpage It is composed of several command-line tools allowing to stream audio coming from audio backend interfaces to VBAN stream (vban_emitter) or playout incoming VBAN stream to audio backend interfaces (vban_receptor), or send text over the vban protocol (vban_sendtext). Up to now, for audio tools, Alsa, PulseAudio and Jack audio backends have been implemented. A fifo (pipe) output is also existing, to allow chaining command-line tools, and a file output too (writing raw pcm data).

Compilation and installation

Depending on which audio backends you want to compile in, you need corresponding library and source headers. Usual package names are:

• Alsa: libasound(X) and eventually libasound(X)-dev
• PulseAudio: libpulse(X) and eventually libpulse(X)-dev
• Jack: libjack(X) and eventually libjack(X)-dev

vban is distributed with autotools build scripts, therefore, to build, you need to install autoconf and automake, and to invoke:

$ ./autogen.sh              # probably only once for ever
$ ./configure               # with or without options (--help to get the list of possible options)
$ make                      # with or without options

To install, simply invoke:

# make install

By default, vban tools will be compiled with all 3 audio backends. To disable them, configure options are: --disable-alsa --disable-pulseaudio --disable-jack

Usage

Invoking vban_receptor or vban_emitter without any parameter will give hints on how to use them :

Usage: vban_receptor [OPTIONS]...

-i, --ipaddress=IP      : MANDATORY. ipaddress to get stream from
-p, --port=PORT         : MANDATORY. port to listen to
-s, --streamname=NAME   : MANDATORY. streamname to play
-b, --backend=TYPE      : audio backend to use. Available audio backends are: alsa pulseaudio jack pipe file . default is alsa.
-q, --quality=ID        : network quality indicator from 0 (low latency) to 4. This also have interaction with jack buffer size. default is 1
-c, --channels=LIST     : channels from the stream to use. LIST is of form x,y,z,... default is to forward the stream as it is
-o, --output=NAME       : DEPRECATED. please use -d
-d, --device=NAME       : Audio device name. This is file name for file backend, server name for jack backend, device for alsa, stream_name for pulseaudio.
-l, --loglevel=LEVEL    : Log level, from 0 (FATAL) to 4 (DEBUG). default is 1 (ERROR)
-h, --help              : display this message

Usage: vban_emitter [OPTIONS]...

-i, --ipaddress=IP      : MANDATORY. ipaddress to send stream to
-p, --port=PORT         : MANDATORY. port to use
-s, --streamname=NAME   : MANDATORY. streamname to use
-b, --backend=TYPE      : TEMPORARY DISABLED. audio backend to use. Only alsa backend is working at this time
-d, --device=NAME       : Audio device name. This is file name for file backend, server name for jack backend, device for alsa, stream_name for pulseaudio.
-r, --rate=VALUE        : Audio device sample rate. default 44100
-n, --nbchannels=VALUE  : Audio device number of channels. default 2
-f, --format=VALUE      : Audio device sample format (see below). default is 16I (16bits integer)
-c, --channels=LIST     : channels from the stream to use. LIST is of form x,y,z,... default is to forward the stream as it is
-l, --loglevel=LEVEL    : Log level, from 0 (FATAL) to 4 (DEBUG). default is 1 (ERROR)
-h, --help            : display this message

Recognized bit format are 8I, 16I, 24I, 32I, 32F, 64F, 12I, 10I

Usage: vban_sendtext [OPTIONS] MESSAGE

-i, --ipaddress=IP    : MANDATORY. ipaddress to send stream to
-p, --port=PORT         : MANDATORY. port to use
-s, --streamname=NAME   : MANDATORY. streamname to use
-b, --bps=VALUE         : Data bitrate indicator. default 0 (no special bitrate)
-n, --ident=VALUE       : Subchannel identification. default 0
-f, --format=VALUE      : Text format used. can be: 0 (ASCII), 1 (UTF8), 2 (WCHAR), 240 (USER). default 1
-l, --loglevel=LEVEL    : Log level, from 0 (FATAL) to 4 (DEBUG). default is 1 (ERROR)
-h, --help              : display this message

About --channels option, a bit more tips:

• channels indexes are from 1 to 256 (as specified by VBAN specifications, and well, its probably enough for any soundcard or jack configuration)
• you can repeat channels
• if you use in-existent channels, you will get silence but no error

Examples:

vban_receptor -i IP -p PORT -s STREAMNAME -c1                   # keep only channel 1 and play out as mono
vban_receptor -i IP -p PORT -s STREAMNAME -c1,1,1,1             # keep only channel 1 and play it out on 4 output channels (given that your output device is able to do it)
vban_receptor -i IP -p PORT -s STREAMNAME -c2,41,125,7,1,45     # select some channels and play them out on 6 output channels (same comment)
vban_emitter -i IP -p PORT -s STREAMNAME -c1,1,1,1               # use audio source channel 1 (opening it in mono therefore, and build up a 4 channels stream with copies of the same data in all channels)
vban_sendtext -i IP -p 6980 -sCommand1 "Strip(0).mute = 1;"     # mute strip 1 of VoiceMeeter Banana. see [VoiceMeeter Banana manual](https://www.vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/VoicemeeterBanana_UserManual.pdf) for more info

LATENCY

vban_receptor does its best to keep latency reasonable, according to the -q (--quality) parameter. A buffer size is computed according to the quality parameter, following the recommandation of VBAN Protocol specification document. Then:

• data is read from / written to network in chunks of buffer size
• for alsa, buffer size is used to require an adequate latency
• for pulseaudio, it is directly used to set the stream buffer size
• for jack, it is used to set an internal buffer size to the double

GUI

This project is only componed of command line tools. If you are looking for a gui, you can take a look at: VBAN-manager project on GitHub