The Csound Command
The command csound is a basic frontend to the system that can be used to generate a sound output from an orchestra file and a score file (or a unified csd file). It is designed to be called from a terminal or DOS window. In addition to it, there are other front-ends, which might be simpler to use. The score file can be in one of many different formats, according to user preference. Translation, sorting, and formatting into orchestra-readable numeric text is handled by various preprocessors; all or part of the score is then sent on to the orchestra. Orchestra performance is influenced by command flags, which set the level of displays and console reports, specify I/0 filenames and sample formats, and declare the nature of real-time sensing and control.
Order of Precedence
There are five places where options for Csound performance may be set. They are processed in the following order:
Csound's own defaultsFile defined by the CSOUND6RC environment variable, or .csound6rc file in the HOME directoryA .csound6rc file in the current directory<CsOptions> tag in a .csd filePassed on the Csound command line
The later options in the list will override any earlier ones.
As of version 5.01 of Csound, sample and control rate override flags
(-r and
-k)
specified anywhere override sr, kr, and ksmps defined in the orchestra header.
&commanddesc;
&commandflags;
&commandflagscategory;
&commandenvironment;
&commandunifile;
&commandpreproc;