Beast is a
music composition and
modular synthesis application released as
free software under the
GNU GPL and
GNU LGPL licenses, that runs under
Unix. It supports
MIDI,
WAV/
AIFF/
MP3/
OggVorbis/etc audio files and
LADSPA modules. It is capable of
multitrack editing, unlimited undo/redo support, real-time synthesis support, 32-bit audio rendering,
full duplex support, multiprocessor support, conditional
MMX/SSE utilisation for
plugins, precise timing down to sample granularity, on-demand and partial loading of
wave files, on the fly decoding, stereo mixing,
FFT scopes,
MIDI automation and full
scriptability in
Scheme. The
plugins, synthesis core and the user interface are actively being developed and translated into a variety of languages, regularly assimilating user feedback such as from the Beast_Feature_Requests page. BEAST is an abbreviation for Better Audio System. BSE is an abbreviation for Better Sound Engine, and it implements all the necessary music processing logic required by BEAST in a separate reusable
library. The "Better" portion of the names refer to the complexity and many iterations involved in implementing such a "BEAST".