install

Additional install commands

macOS

Homebrewverified · 100%

brew install waon

local Homebrew formula metadata

Linux

Nixverified · 92%

nix profile install nixpkgs#waon

nixpkgs package indexes · pkgs/by-name/wa/waon/package.nix · source: api.github.com

overview

Package summary

Wave-to-notes transcriber

Project links

Commands and aliases

waon

history

Project history and usage

WaoN is Kengo Ichiki's Wave-to-Notes transcriber: a command-line program that analyzes audio and writes standard MIDI. The name is both an English acronym-like description and a Japanese wordplay meaning harmony of notes or chord.

Project history

WaoN dates back to at least the 1998-2007 copyright span shown in the older SourceForge help output, making it an early Unix-oriented open source attempt at automatic music transcription. Its author described the original motivation as wanting to pick up piano voicings from favorite recordings and not finding a functional Unix application for that purpose.

The project lived on SourceForge before moving to GitHub. Version 0.10 on SourceForge improved result quality by cleaning up useless notes, and version 0.11, released from GitHub in August 2015, fixed a gWaoN audio-device initialization bug and applied an older MinGW patch, with Win32 binaries becoming available from that era.

How it is used

WaoN's native input is WAV and its native output is Standard MIDI File format 0. Users can pipe audio through stdin and MIDI through stdout, combine it with SoX for broader audio formats, or pipe output to TiMidity for immediate playback.

Technically, WaoN belongs to the older FFT and signal-processing lineage of automatic music transcription rather than the modern deep-learning lineage. Ichiki later compared the old FFT-based WaoN approach with Google's Magenta transcription work, making the tool a small but interesting artifact in open source audio-to-MIDI history.

Timeline

1998-2007: the SourceForge-era help output identifies Kengo Ichiki's original development and copyright period.
2015-08-09: v0.10 and v0.11 were published as GitHub releases, with v0.11 described as the first release from GitHub.
2016: Ichiki published a comparison between WaoN and Google Magenta's music transcription work, framing WaoN as an older FFT-based program.

Related projects

WaoN presents itself as the inverse of TiMidity/TiMidity++, which synthesize audio from MIDI. It also shipped related utilities: `pv`, a phase vocoder for time stretching and pitch shifting, and `gwaon`, a graphical front end/visualizer.

Sources

security posture

Risk level: green

narrow executable package without higher-risk signals.

Risk classifier

green risk · low confidence · appliance

Why

narrow executable package without higher-risk signals

Signals

metadata:no-higher-risk-signals

Install behavior

No Homebrew post-install hook is recorded in formula metadata.
Homebrew bottle metadata is available for 13 platform targets.
Installs with 2 runtime dependencies.
Build metadata lists 1 build dependencies.

Recommended review

Before unattended agent use, check whether the tool reads plaintext credentials, writes remote state, publishes artifacts, or shells out to plugins.

executables

Installed executables

Command	Kind	Exposure	Note
`waon`	cli	global executable

freshness

Version and freshness

These signals separate page generation age, package-manager activity, and upstream release comparison. Version lag is warned only when an evidence URL and comparable versions are present.

page generated2026-07-08

manager version0.11

manager updated

local dataok

upstreamcurrent

latest detectedv0.11

https://github.com/kichiki/WaoN

infoNo package-manager update timestamp was available.low confidence

install metadata

Package metadata

Package key	brew:waon
Version	0.11
Package manager	Homebrew
Package manager page	https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/waon
Homepage	https://kichiki.github.io/WaoN/
Repository	https://github.com/kichiki/WaoN
Upstream docs	https://kichiki.github.io/WaoN
License	GPL-2.0-or-later
Source archive	https://github.com/kichiki/WaoN/archive/refs/tags/v0.11.tar.gz
Dependencies	fftw, libsndfile
Build dependencies	pkgconf
Bottle	available (on arm64_big_sur, arm64_linux, arm64_monterey, arm64_sequoia, arm64_sonoma, arm64_tahoe, arm64_ventura, big_sur, catalina, monterey, sonoma, ventura, x86_64_linux)
Homebrew post-install	not defined
Service	none declared

registry facts

Source database details

Source Database	Homebrew formula API
Tap	homebrew/core
Full Name	waon
Version Scheme	0
Revision	0
Bottle Stable Root URL	https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core
Deprecated	no
Disabled	no
Keg Only	no
URL Keys	stable

source database matches

Other package-manager records

Matches are pulled from external package-manager indexes and kept separate from local Automic Vault package links.

Nix95%

waon

nix profile install nixpkgs#waon

normalized package name match
Matched by: Waon

nixpkgs package indexes · api.github.com · nixpkgs package indexes: pkgs/by-name/wa/waon/package.nix from https://api.github.com/repos/NixOS/nixpkgs/git/trees/master?recursive=1

package graph

Links come from deterministic package relationships, av.db category and tag curation, ecosystem matches, and package hub membership.

source trail

Generated from repository data

This page is generated by av-web from the private package SQLite artifact built by scripts/generate-pkg-sqlite.py.

Combined YAML source

View the package source record on GitHub.

combined/waon.yml

Used sources

Geiger risk classifier
Nucleus package database
av.db category and tag curation
cross-ecosystem install command graph
curated package history
external package-manager database matches
package relationship graph
package version freshness
package-page enrichment

Install waon with Homebrew, Nix