# karlstav/cava

Cross-platform Audio Visualizer

Repository: https://github.com/karlstav/cava
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/cava
Language: C
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: alsa, audio-visualizer, freebsd, glsl-shaders, linux, macos, ncurses, portaudio, pulseaudio, sdl2, sndio, windows, pipewire
Last push: 2026-08-18T18:33:11+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 86/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 64, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4553, "days_push": 15, "days_rel": 81, "gap_med": 137.5, "n_releases_24m": 5}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 6370, forks 295 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:42.880286+00:00)

## What it is
CAVA is a cross-platform bar spectrum audio visualizer that renders real-time frequency visualizations in the terminal or in an SDL desktop window. It captures audio from many backends (PulseAudio, PipeWire, ALSA, JACK, sndio, Core Audio, etc.) and supports GLSL shaders, ncurses output, and a cavacore library for embedding.

## Use cases
- visualize music playing on my linux desktop
- terminal audio spectrum visualizer
- show a bar visualizer for pulseaudio output
- render audio spectrum with sdl and shaders
- run an audio visualizer over ssh
- embed a spectrum analyzer in my own app

## When to choose
- you want an aesthetic, responsive real-time spectrum visualizer on Linux, macOS, Windows, or FreeBSD
- you need terminal-based visualization over ssh or in dumb terminals
- you want flexible audio capture backends and GLSL shader customization

## When to avoid
- you need scientifically accurate spectral analysis
- you need a visualizer for a web or mobile app
- you only need offline audio file analysis rather than live capture

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: audio-processing, gui, terminal-ui, cli
- domain: media, cross-platform, developer-tools
- platform: windows, bsd, cli, cross-platform
- tags: audio-visualizer, spectrum-analyzer, sdl2, pulseaudio, pipewire, alsa, ncurses, fftw, glsl-shaders, terminal, audio, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- karlstav/cava (main) score 86

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:42.880286+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:45:12.751300+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/karlstav/cava (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:42.880286+00:00, sha 2944eee47b0a)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.