# Anyone use cava cli visualizer? Can't get it to visualize anything



## i-bsd (May 7, 2018)

Installed audio/cava but it doesn't visualize any audio when playing (e.g. YouTube).

Tried with pulse and fifo.

Anyone had success getting this to work?


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## Sensucht94 (May 8, 2018)

Hi 
Actually I didn't know about this until you posted it here, quite the funny thing. Since I only use sndio, I compiled it against libsndio and it works, with audio/musicpd+audio/ncmpc, without any need to create a config dir, or point MPD output to a fifo temporary file. Port's maintainer is tobik@, and it seems it was him to add a patch for sndio as backend for cava on github.

I don't see why it shouldn't work with pluseaudio too, but you may want to ask him for clarification


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## rigoletto@ (May 8, 2018)

There was a topic exactly about this subject a few months ago, but I do not remember if there was a solution or not.


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## tobik@ (May 8, 2018)

i-bsd said:


> Installed audio/cava but it doesn't visualize any audio when playing (e.g. YouTube).
> 
> Tried with pulse and fifo.
> 
> Anyone had success getting this to work?


You're very light on the details. For cava to work with PulseAudio, your application must a) have a PulseAudio backend and/or b) be configured to use PulseAudio. Depending on the application you're using that might not happen automatically.


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## i-bsd (Oct 8, 2018)

tobik@ said:


> You're very light on the details. For cava to work with PulseAudio, your application must a) have a PulseAudio backend and/or b) be configured to use PulseAudio. Depending on the application you're using that might not happen automatically.



Hi tobik@,

This is the content of my config file:


```
method = pulse
source = oss_output.dsp4.monitor
```

I get some output (only on Firefox since it's using pulseaudio but not on ncmpcpp or other programs). The output is not sensitive however (bars move but not accurately). Difficult to explain what this looks like without screencasting it.

Have I set the config parameters correctly for pulseaudio using 'oss_output.dsp4.monitor'?

Any chance you could post an example config of a working cava/pulseaudio config for FreeBSD?


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## i-bsd (Oct 8, 2018)

Would love a way to get programs like mpsyt or mpv working with cava if possible.


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