Benben

Benben is a fast and efficient command line audio player, and audio->WAV converter, for Linux/Unix that’s full of character. It supports multiple formats (see below), and is especially suited to people who organize their music in folders, and for those who prefer to use terminals instead of GUIs.

It is written almost entirely in the Crystal programming language. See “Notable Features” below for more information.

Source Code Repository Releases, including Linux x86-64 AppImage downloads

Example videos

• Partition 36 - Overdrive (Opus)
• ZUN - 亡き王女の為のセプテット (Septette for a Dead Princess) (MP3)
• Partition 36 - Searching for My Identity (Ogg Vorbis)
• Skaven - Ice Frontier (Remix by Necros) (Module/S3M)
• SoulCalibur - Wings of Faith (Sophitia) (VGM - Namco C352)
• Partition 36 - The Mainframe (FLAC)
• Warcraft 2 - Human 2 (General MIDI)

The Partition 36 videos are songs written by me. If you want to find more of my stuff, check out my Bandcamp page.

Supported Formats

• VGM
  • Uncompressed (.vgm)
  • GZip compressed (.vgz)
  • ZStandard compressed (.vgzst)
  • BZip2 compressed (.vgb)
• MPEG-1
  • MPEG-1 Layer III (.mp3)
  • MPEG-1 Layer II (.mp1)
  • MPEG-1 Layer I (.mp1)
• Ogg Vorbis
• Opus
• FLAC
• General MIDI (.mid)
• All module formats supported by libxmp
• RIFF WAVE (.wav)
• Sun Au (.au)

Notable Features

• PulseAudio, PortAudio, and libao backends.
• High-performance playback.
• Fast, multi-threaded UI via S-Lang.
• Multiple files can be specified and they will play one after the other.
• Song and playlist looping.
• Support for the following formats:
  • VGM/VGZ/VGZST/VGB, with support for all the VGM chips that supported by YunoSynth.
  • FLAC (in pure Crystal) via RemiAudio.
  • MIDI (and MUS - in pure Crystal) via Haematite.
  • All modules supported by libxmp.
  • Ogg Vorbis via libvorbis.
  • Opus via libopus.
  • MPEG-1 Layers I, II, and III (.mp1, .mp2, and .mp3 files) via libmpg123.
  • RIFF WAVE and Au files
• Support for XSPF and JSPF playlists.
• High quality resampling.
• Configuration file support, including support for per-song configurations.
• Rendering multiple files in parallel to either WAV or Au format.
• Support for multiple bit depths and sample rates, and both integer and floating point WAV/AU files.
• Optional effects:
  • Soft clipping.
  • Parametric EQ with an arbitrary number of bands.
  • Stereo enhancement effect.
  • Reverb with selectable type and preset.
• Customizable VU meter.
• Keyboard control support.
• ReplayGain/RVA support.