Audacious

Audacious is an open source and cross-platform project that provides users with a unique audio player application derived from the well known XMMS and Beep Media Player software. It is compatible with the GNU/Linux, BSD, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Features at a glance

Key features include support for a wide range of audio file formats, support for dragging and dropping of individual song files and entire music folders, ability to search for albums or artists in your entire music collection, edit or create playlists, as well as to listen to Audio-CDs or Internet streams.

In addition, it features a graphical equalizer that lets users to tweak the sound, supports LADSPA effects, a complex plugin architecture (a collection of plugins is available for download separately), and support for Winamp Classic skins.

The plugins that are distributed along with the Audacious audio player will extend its default functionality, allowing users to fetch lyrics for songs, set alarms, add support for even more audio file formats, add tray icon support, Last.fm scrobbler, and much more.

Among other useful features, we can mention a queue manager, shuffle mode, repeat mode, "stop after this song" and "no playlist advance" functionality, detailed song information, removal of duplicate files, and renaming of files.

Under the hood and supported platforms

The application is written entirely in the C programming language and uses the GTK+ GUI toolkit for its beautiful and modern graphical user interface. Officially supported Linux distributions include Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Arch Linux, and Gentoo.

It also supports Microsoft Windows (XP and later) operating systems, as well as BSD derivatives, such as FreeBSD. At the moment, it runs well on both 32-bit and 64-bit instruction set architectures.

Bottom line

Summing up, Audacious is a really great, fast and modern audio playback application that features two different graphical user interfaces, support for numerous effects, audio file formats and plugins, as well as a 10-band equalizer.

What is new in this release:

• #691 Bogus errors printed at end of .m4a file (due to use-after-free)
• Fixed the vulnerability recently discovered in Game_Music_Emu..

What is new in version 3.8.1:

• #626: Added support for opus cover art in the info bar.
• #676: Fixed: Audacious freezes randomly while playing audio
• #680: Fixed: Current time value can become larger than the track length by trying to drag the progress bar beyond the end of the trough
• #686: Fixed: 'Do not load metadata for songs until played' option appears twice in the QT interface preferences
• Added Arabic translation.

What is new in version 3.8:

• With this version, it is finally possible to run multiple instances of Audacious (#635). Instances are numbered and can be started with audacious -2, audacious -3, and so on; once running, they can be controlled with audtool -2 , audtool -3 , and so on. Each instance remembers its own configuration.
• Support for Windows has been improved:
• There is a new installer using NSIS, based on work by Carlo Bramini (#342).
• The user interface handles high-resolution displays better and no longer appears blurred due to scaling.
• Audio output now uses the native waveOut API, allowing higher bit depths, lower latency, and better integration with the system volume control.
• New audtool commands have been added:
• Enable/disable stream recording (#594)
• Enable/disable any plugin: effects, visualizations, etc. (#638)
• Cuesheet support is more seamless, with the following fixes:
• More robust logic to prevent adding duplicate entries (#630)
• Display artist correctly for cuesheets with only a single PERFORMER line (#644)
• Add audio files normally if cuesheet support is disabled (#650)
• Track lengths correctly account for pregap with libcue 2.0 or later (#651)
• Robert Cern'ansky' contributed a new plugin to browse music on an Ampache server. Most of the implementation resides in a separate support library, available here.
• Other new features:
• Folders can be added from various URI protocols (ftp, mtp, etc.) via GIO (#503)
• Audio effects and equalization can optionally be applied to a stream recording (#592)
• Search results can be added to the playlist using drag and drop (#621)
• Option to display MMM:SS instead of H:MM:SS (#631)
• Automatic selection of the best available output bit depth
• Album artist support for FLAC and Vorbis files (read-write)
• Support for the freedesktop.org startup notification protocol
• Existing features ported to the Qt interface:
• Scrobbler setup dialog (#656)
• Context (right-click) menu in the playlist
• Copy-and-paste of playlist entries
• "Open Containing Folder" command
• Desktop notifications and file deletion (via the appropriate plugins)
• Access to the full set of FileWriter options

What is new in version 3.7.2 / 3.8 Beta:

• New audtool commands have been added:
• Enable/disable stream recording (#594)
• Enable/disable any plugin: effects, visualizations, etc. (#638)
• Cuesheet support is more seamless, with the following fixes:
• More robust logic to prevent adding duplicate entries (#630)
• Display artist correctly for cuesheets with only a single PERFORMER line (#644)
• Add audio files normally if cuesheet support is disabled (#650)
• Track lengths correctly account for pregap with libcue 2.0 or later (#651)
• Robert Cern'ansky' contributed a new plugin to browse music on an Ampache server. Most of the implementation resides in a separate support library.
• Other new features:
• Folders can be added from various URI protocols (ftp, mtp, etc.) via GIO (#503)
• Audio effects and equalization can optionally be applied to a stream recording (#592).
• Option to display MMM:SS instead of H:MM:SS (#631)
• Automatic selection of the best available output bit depth
• Album artist support for FLAC and Vorbis files (read-write)
• Support for the freedesktop.org startup notification protocol
• Existing features ported to the Qt interface:
• Context (right-click) menu in the playlist
• Copy-and-paste of playlist entries
• "Open Containing Folder" command
• Desktop notifications and file deletion (with the appropriate plugins)
• Access to the full set of FileWriter options
• Bugs fixed since 3.7.2:
• Silenced an error message at the end of some MP3 files (#628)
• Fixed various problems seeking within a PSF file (#649)
• Resolved build errors when cross-compiling (#652, #653).
• Fixed undefined behavior detected by -fsanitize=undefined compiler flag
• Silenced a "no such property" warning with older GTK+ versions

What is new in version 3.7.2:

• #608: Cuesheet support issue: 'Album Title' missing (replaced with current directory name), as well as Year and Genre in playlist when adding songs from cue files
• #615: Audacious crashes on missing .wvc files for hybrid wavpack files
• #617: audacious -j does not open jump-to-file dialog
• #618: scrobbler complains of network problem when checking permission
• #623: GCC 6 fix for JACK plugin
• #627: Network connection dropped then resumed, but Audacious does not refresh status

What is new in version 3.7:

• New features:
• Playlists can be shuffled by whole albums rather than single tracks.
• Internet streams can be recorded while playing via a simple record button (GTK+ only).
• The playlist export window displays supported formats in a drop-down list (GTK+ only).
• A new, unified window has been added for managing equalizer presets (GTK+ only).
• The user interface automatically adjusts to be more usable on high-resolution screens (GTK+ only).
• An "Edit Lyrics" option has been added to the LyricWiki plugin, which opens the edit page for the current song.
• Guessing of missing tag fields can be disabled (#513).
• Decoding and playback of standard input is possible with e.g. echo file.mp3 | audacious -
• Qt interface improvements:
• The Qt interface can be customized with several new appearance settings. Many other small fixes and improvements, such as a visualizer in the info bar, have been made to bring the interface closer to feature-parity with the GTK+ interface.
• In addition, the following plugins have been ported to Qt:
• Winamp Classic Interface
• Playlist Manager
• Search Tool
• Status Icon
• Bugs fixed since Audacious 3.6.2:
• Replay Gain information is read correctly from ID3v2.3 tags (#280).
• "Open Containing Folder" works on Microsoft Windows (#540).
• Internet streams no longer show a negative remaining time (#546).
• With JACK output, monaural streams are played to both speakers (#549).
• Older Winamp skins without eq_ex.bmp are loaded correctly (#555).
• Absolute file paths using legacy character sets are loaded correctly from M3U playlists (#568).
• Winamp skins with undersized bitmaps are displayed correctly (no more gray blocks).
• Other changes:
• The latest version of libguess is included to allow character set detection on all systems.
• In dual GTK and Qt builds, incompatible plugins are hidden to avoid confusion.
• AdPlug has been updated to version 2.2.1 (#70). libbinio 1.4 is also included.
• Most audtool commands now apply to the playlist which is playing, even if it is in the background (#557).
• The crossfade effect handles songs of different sample rates more gracefully (no warning message). However, resampling is still recommended to avoid clicks between songs.

What is new in version 3.6.2:

• Bugs fixed include #527, #531, #535, and #539.

What is new in version 3.6.1:

• Bugs fixed include #511, #512, #518, #520, and #522.

What is new in version 3.5.2 / 3.6 Alpha 1:

• Major changes in the upcoming version:
• A completely new Qt-based user interface, which can be installed alongside the existing GTK+ and Winamp Classic interfaces. The new interface is usable today but not yet as feature-rich as the existing interfaces. In future, it will be the basis of a Mac OS X port of Audacious-stay tuned.
• We have switched back to using GTK+ version 2.x by default. It has now been over three years since the release of GTK+ 3.0, and yet the "legacy" version of the toolkit provides more features relevant to Audacious, better cross-platform support, a more stable API, and lower memory usage. Audacious can still be built with GTK3 if desired, but we recommend the GTK2 variant for any desktop environment other than GNOME 3.
• The source code has been converted from C99 to C++11. In addition to making the Qt port easier, the use of C++11 is already allowing more rapid development by letting the compiler work out many details that previously had to be written by hand. The plugin API has also been changed to C++. Contact us if you have a plugin for Audacious that you want help updating.
• Requested features added (or brought back):
• Double-size scaling of Winamp skins (#41)
• Searching by genre in the search tool plugin (#158)
• The playlist manager can be docked in the GTK+ interface (#160)
• Crossfading on seek and manual song change (#213)
• Support for "album artist" in song tags (#238)
• Search results are filtered by number of songs in the search tool plugin (#396)
• Cue files are automatically added to playlists and to the library (#430)
• Song lengths read from ID3 tags are sanity-checked (#441)
• Adjustable HTTP buffer size (#443)
• Optional calculation of a more accurate song length estimate for MP3 files (#446)
• Optional skipping of leading and trailing silence in MIDI files (#463)
• Restored settings dialog for the SID plugin (#476)
• Other new features and improvements:
• Audacious can now be built as a headless music player "daemon" with no GTK+ dependency. It this configuration, it can be controlled using either audtool or your favorite MPRIS 2 client. Note that some plugins still require GTK+.
• By default, playback now resumes in a paused state upon startup, so that you can press play to continue from where you left off. If desired, there is still an option to resume immediately in an audibly playing state.
• Window positions of visualization plugins and of the search tool are now saved and restored at startup when the Winamp Classic interface is used. A new menu option and keyboard shortcut (Y) have also been added to activate the search tool.
• There is a new effect plugin to remove leading and trailing silence in any song file. Enabling this effect is recommended if you're using crossfade.
• New controls have been added to the song information dialog to allow tagging entire albums without retyping the artist and album name for each song.
• A new option has been added to probe content of files with no recognized filename extension. With this option enabled, files with no extension can be added to playlists and to the library automatically, and subtunes in those files will also be recognized. The extra probing does slow Audacious down, so enable the option only if needed.
• Support for the SID song lengths database has been restored. Songlengths.txt should be installed in the same location as the C64 ROMs (generally /usr/share/sidplayfp/ on Linux).
• The ALSA output plugin now checks for new devices when the settings dialog is opened, so it's no longer necessary to restart Audacious after plugging in a USB audio device.
• The JACK and sndio output plugins have been rewritten from scratch in order to fix a number of problems.
• Two new plugins have been added for native audio output and multimedia keyboard support on Mac OS X.
• The generic and unhelpful "No decoder found" message has been replaced with somewhat more specific error reporting; for example, "No such file or directory."
• Bugs fixed since Audacious 3.5.2:
• MP4 decoding now uses FFmpeg instead of the deprecated libmp4ff (#425)
• Menus appear on the correct monitor under Windows (#450)
• Better tolerance for various character encoding errors (#481)
• The user interface no longer freezes while the last song in the playlist fades out.
• A-to-B repeat correctly repeats from the end of the song if only point A is set.
• Fixed extreme CPU usage when copying and pasting thousands of playlist entries.
• MP3 files without Replay Gain tags are no longer amplified by 1 dB.

What is new in version 3.5.2:

• The final release in the 3.5 series contains updated translations and fixes for a few more bugs, including #457, #458, and #462. Meanwhile, we are working hard on Audacious 3.6.

What is new in version 3.5.1:

• This release contains updated translations and fixes for a few bugs, including #440, #442, and #452.

What is new in version 3.5:

• Feature requests implemented:
• Delete songs from the filesystem or move them to the trash (#76)
• Open songs in a running Audacious instance from Windows Explorer (#147)
• Switch playlists by scrolling on the tab bar (#273)
• Option to show number of entries in playlist tabs (#274)
• Support for Microsoft ASXv3 playlists (#294)
• Option to hide tab bar when there is only one playlist (#339)
• OpenGL spectrum visualization works in Windows (#350)
• Alarm plugin provides new "Set Alarm" menu item (#372)
• New settings window for JACK output (#388)
• ID3v2.3 tags are no longer converted to the newer but less portable ID3v2.4 format (#391)
• Translations are included in the Windows build (#416)
• More changes and new features:
• New audtool commands for working with multiple playlists
• Default tag format for MP3 files changed from APEv2 to ID3v2.3
• Support for COVERART element in Ogg Vorbis tags
• Full support for Unicode filenames on Windows
• Album art enlarges with the song info window
• Opening a folder in a new playlist automatically sets the playlist title
• Unified settings page for switching and configuring interfaces
• New menu items go directly to various plugin categories in settings window
• Most dialog windows now remember their position and size
• Removed features:
• In this release cycle, there were also many changes intended to make the software easier to maintain in the future. The plugin API has been cleaned up and simplified. D-Bus support has been migrated from dbus-glib to the newer GDBus library. libaudgui has been expanded to replace some of the functions that were deprecated in GTK+ 3.10. As a consequence of these changes, a few features from previous releases are no longer supported:
• MPRIS 1.0 support has been removed. (MPRIS 2.0 has been supported since Audacious 3.2.)
• libaudclient is no longer included with Audacious because it is tied to the older dbus-glib library. However, existing copies of libaudclient will still work with Audacious 3.5.
• MIDI playback to hardware synthesizers via ALSA is no longer supported. MIDI files can still be played in Audacious using FluidSynth (a software synthesizer). Find out how to set up MIDI playback.
• Bugs fixed since Audacious 3.4.3:
• Opening M3U playlists over HTTP fails without Content-Length (#308)
• "Show leading zeros" setting not applied consistently (#309)
• Songs with no track number cannot be scrobbled (#380)
• Seek buttons get stuck in Winamp interface (#390)
• Command line cannot contain non-ASCII characters in Windows (#392)
• Some MiniPSFs cannot be played in Windows (#394)
• Shuffle button in Winamp interface larger than it appears (#397)
• Odd behavior when double-clicking bitrate info in Winamp interface (#398)
• File path not wrapping in song info window (#399)
• Repeat button missing in Ivory and Osmosis skins (#405)
• APEv2 tag ignored if followed by ID3v1 tag (#420)
• Some Opus streams cannot be played
• Crash when equalizer preset cannot be loaded
• Edges of song title cropped in Winamp interface when using vector fonts
• Winamp interface does not show bitrate info in Russian locale
• Visualizations show only silence when using voice removal plugin
• Ogg Vorbis files with tags larger than 256 KB not recognized correctly
• MP3 stream information does not appear until stream is played

What is new in version 3.4.3:

• This minor update fixes bugs #364 and #371, and includes updated translations.

What is new in version 3.4.2:

• Bugs fixed include:
• Opening an Internet channel takes too long at the first time
• SDL error: Failed to open audio stream: XAudio2: XAudio2Create() failed at open..
• incorrect playtime length
• NULL pointer segfault due to vfs async race
• Time label shows wrong time if slider is dragged beyond its upper limit
• some opus file won't play

What is new in version 3.4 Alpha 1:

• General changes since 3.3:
• A new scrobbler plugin, using Last.fm's Scrobbling 2.0 API, has been contributed by "Pitxyoki."
• audtool can seek with sub-second precision (#95).
• Album art fetching is done in the background so that it will not make the UI unresponsive. URI schemes other than file:// are no longer blacklisted (#177).
• A new command-line option (--quit-after-play) makes the player exit automatically when finished playing (#230).
• A global hotkey can be configured to enable/disable the "stop after current song" option (#232).
• New commands available in the GTK interface:
• Automatically remove duplicate entries from a playlist (#210)
• Repeat only a portion of a song ("A-to-B repeat") (#220)
• Show remaining instead of elapsed time (#237)
• Sort playlist entries by song length (#244)
• Sort, randomize, and reverse the order of selected playlist entries only
• Other GTK interface improvements:
• Playlist columns can be resized (#19). This has been one of the most frequently (and vehemently) requested features. Unfortunately, it only works correctly with a patched version of GTK+ (the necessary changes will be shipped in GTK+ 3.8).
• Keyboard focus in the playlist is handled differently, fixing some cases where it was not updated correctly when the playlist was edited (#191).
• The info bar visualization is automatically disabled when the player is minimized to the system tray in order to reduce CPU usage.

What is new in version 3.3.4:

• Bugs fixed: #228, #239, #241, #243, #245 (a nasty bug introduced in 3.3.3 that was causing sporadic crashes for some users), and #246.

What is new in version 2.1:

• Enhancements:
• Newui was moved into a plugin and is now called 'gtkui'. It is still not very complete, but has progressed some.
• Sorting by album added.
• Completely new, written from scratch alsa-ng output plugin, which fixes many of the problems our old ALSA output plugin had; including high CPU load with Intel-HDA.
• Listing of available interfaces via 'audacious -i list'.
• Added bs2b (Bauer stereophonic-to-binaural) headphone crossfade filter effect plugin. It is designed to prevent listener fatigue by reducing the super-stereo effect that headphones normally produce.
• rootvis plugin was dropped, as it does not work on most systems anymore.
• Some updated translations.
• Bugfixes:
• Mouse wheel settings where removed (for now) from properties, because they didn't actually do anything.
• Fixed problems with seeking that could occur under certain conditions.
• Many fixes in newui/gtkui.
• Fixed frenzied looping, 100% CPU when loading metadata is disabled.
• Run visualization process only when a shown and playing.
• Quit cleanly (and safely) on SIGINT/QUIT/TERM.
• Fixed several race conditions and NULL-pointer dereferences.
• New playlist scanner, which, related to above, is safer and more effective.
• Fixed MPRIS interface's GetStatus, StatusChange and Quit functionality to match the official MPRIS spec.
• Bunch of LADSPA, cdaudio-ng, PulseAudio fixes and cleanups.
• Remove bogus and unnecessary end-of-playback logic in vorbis plugin.
• Fixed NEON transport plugin error reporting.
• SID-plugin was synchronized with XMMS-SID codebase, with number of enhancements and fixes.
• Fixed SSE2 instruction set support checking in configure.
• JACK output plugin got cleaned up and checking for JACK availability was changed to use pkg-config.
• And bunch of other bugfixes, cleanups, etc.

Requirements:

• GTK+