asak

asak [-j] command [options]
asak rec [-d index] [output]
asak play [-d index] [input]
asak monitor [-b size]
asak list

asak (audio Swiss Army knife) is a cross-platform audio recording and playback CLI tool with a terminal user interface, written in Rust. It aims to provide functionality similar to SoX but with an interactive and visual experience.
The tool provides four main subcommands. rec records audio from an input device to a WAV file; if no filename is given, it prompts interactively and suggests a UTC-timestamped default name. play plays back a WAV file; if no file is specified, it searches the current directory for WAV files and presents an interactive selection menu. monitor routes audio from the input device to the output device in real time with a visual scope display, useful for quickly testing a microphone or speaker setup. list displays all available audio input and output devices with their indices.
asak uses cpal as its audio backend and ratatui for its terminal UI, providing visual feedback such as level meters and playback animations. Audio resampling is handled via the dasp library when the source and target sample rates differ.

-j, --jack

Use the JACK audio backend instead of the default. Only available on Linux, DragonFly BSD, FreeBSD, and NetBSD when built with the jack feature.

The audio device index to use for recording or playback. Run asak list to see available devices and their indices.

Buffer size for audio input monitoring. Defaults to 1024. Higher values increase latency.

Display help information and exit.

Display version information and exit.

Only WAV format is supported for recording and playback at this time. The monitor subcommand requires the output device to match the system default settings. On Linux, the JACK audio backend requires libjack-dev (or equivalent) to be installed and the tool to be built with the jack feature flag. The project is under active development and some features like effects processing and live position control are not yet implemented.

asak was created by Qichao Lan (chaosprint), a developer at the University of Oslo who specializes in Rust audio programming and is also the author of Glicol, a graph-oriented live coding language. The first commits appeared in early 2024 and the project was publicly announced on Hacker News in December 2024. The tool reached version 0.3.6 by mid-2025. It is licensed under the MIT license.

sox(1), arecord(1), aplay(1), play(1), rec(1), ffmpeg(1)