The Csound Command

Csound is a command for passing anorchestra file andscore file to Csound to generate a soundfile. 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

With some recent additions to Csound, there are now three places (and in some cases four) where options for Csound performance may be set. They are processed in the following order:

1. Csound's own defaults
2. .csoundrc file
3. Csound command line
4. <CsOptions> tag in a .csd file
5. Orchestra header (for sr, kr, ksmps, nchnls)

The last assignment of an option will override any earlier ones.

Generic Flags

Many flags are generic Csound command flags. Various platform implementations may not react the same way to different flags!

The format of a command is:

  csound [-flags] orchname scorename

where the arguments are of 2 types: flag arguments (beginning with a "-"), and name arguments (such as filenames). Certain flag arguments take a following name or numeric argument.