Audacious Media Player
Encyclopedia
Audacious is a free software
audio player with a focus on low resource usage, high audio quality, and support for a wide range of audio formats. It is designed primarily for use on POSIX
-compatible systems such as Linux
, with limited support for Microsoft Windows
. Audacious is the default audio player in Lubuntu
and in Ubuntu Studio
.
of Beep Media Player
, which was a fork of XMMS
. William "nenolod" Pitcock decided to fork Beep Media Player after the original development team announced that they were stopping development in order to create a next-generation version called BMPx. According to the Audacious home page, Pitcock and others "had [their] own ideas about how a player should be designed, which [they] wanted to try in a production environment."
Since version 2.1, Audacious includes both the Winamp
-like interface known from previous versions and a new, GTK+
-based interface known as GTKUI, which resembles foobar2000
to some extent. GTKUI became the default interface in Audacious 2.4.
Prior to version 3.0, Audacious used the GTK+ 2.x toolkit
by default. Partial support for GTK+ 3.x was added in version 2.5, while version 3.0 has full support for GTK+ 3.x and uses it by default.
Current versions of the Audacious core classify plugins as follows (some are low level and not user-visible at this time):
2 skins, and as of version 1.2, some free-form skinning is possible. Winamp .wsz skin files, a type of Zip archive, can be used directly, or can be unarchived to individual directories. The program can use Windows Bitmap (.bmp) graphics from the Winamp archive, although native skins for Linux are usually rendered in Portable Network Graphics (.png) format. Audacious 1.x allows the user to adjust the RGB color balance of any skin, effectively making a basic white skin equivalent to millions of skins of different hues.
), though it supports the concept of other clients connecting to it, such as Conky
.
Connection to Audacious for remote control can be done over plain DBus, by using an MPRIS-compatible client, or using the official Audtool utility created just for this purpose.
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
audio player with a focus on low resource usage, high audio quality, and support for a wide range of audio formats. It is designed primarily for use on POSIX
POSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...
-compatible systems such as Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, with limited support for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. Audacious is the default audio player in Lubuntu
Lubuntu
Lubuntu is a lightweight Linux operating system based on Ubuntu but using the LXDE desktop environment in place of Ubuntu's Unity shell and GNOME desktop...
and in Ubuntu Studio
Ubuntu Studio
Ubuntu Studio is an officially recognized derivative of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, which is explicitly geared to general multimedia production. The original version, based on Ubuntu 7.04, was released on May 10, 2007.-Real-time kernel:...
.
History
Audacious began as a forkFork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
of Beep Media Player
Beep Media Player
The Beep Media Player was a free audio player, based on the XMMS multimedia player. The lead developer was Milosz “deadchip” Derezynski. The BMP is mainly a port of XMMS to GTK+ 2 and, as such, integrates better with the look and feel of more recent versions of GNOME, Xfce, and, if using the...
, which was a fork of XMMS
XMMS
The X Multimedia System is a free audio player for Unix-like systems.-History:XMMS was originally written as X11Amp by Peter and Mikael Alm in November 1997. The player was made to resemble Winamp, which was first released in May that year. As such, XMMS has supported Winamp 2 "classic" skins...
. William "nenolod" Pitcock decided to fork Beep Media Player after the original development team announced that they were stopping development in order to create a next-generation version called BMPx. According to the Audacious home page, Pitcock and others "had [their] own ideas about how a player should be designed, which [they] wanted to try in a production environment."
Since version 2.1, Audacious includes both the Winamp
Winamp
Winamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...
-like interface known from previous versions and a new, GTK+
GTK+
GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...
-based interface known as GTKUI, which resembles foobar2000
Foobar2000
foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. It is known for its highly modular design and extensive SDK which allows third-party developers to do such things as completely replace the interface...
to some extent. GTKUI became the default interface in Audacious 2.4.
Prior to version 3.0, Audacious used the GTK+ 2.x toolkit
Widget toolkit
In computing, a widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces...
by default. Partial support for GTK+ 3.x was added in version 2.5, while version 3.0 has full support for GTK+ 3.x and uses it by default.
Features
Default Codec Support
- MP3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
- Advanced Audio CodingAdvanced Audio CodingAdvanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
(AAC and AAC+) - VorbisVorbisVorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...
- FLACFLACFLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
- WavpackWavPackWavPack is a free, open source lossless audio compression format developed by David Bryant.-Features:WavPack compression can compress 8-, 16-, 24-, and 32-bit fixed-point, and 32-bit floating point audio files in the .WAV file format. It also supports surround sound streams and high frequency...
- MusepackMusepackMusepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 kbit/s...
- TTA (codec)TTA (codec)True Audio is a free software, real-time lossless audio codec, based on adaptive prognostic filters.Also, .tta is the generic extension to filenames of audio files created by True Audio codec.- Codec overview :...
- Windows Media AudioWindows Media AudioWindows Media Audio is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft. The name can be used to refer to its audio file format or its audio codecs. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs...
(WMA) - Apple LosslessApple LosslessApple Lossless Apple Lossless Apple Lossless (also known as ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), or ALE (Apple Lossless Encoder) is an audio codec developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music. After initially being proprietary for many years, in late 2011 Apple open sourced...
(ALAC) - 150 different moduleModule fileModule files are a family of music file formats originating from the MOD file format on Amiga systems used in late 1980s...
formats - Several chiptune formats: AY, GBS, GYMGYMGYM is a sound format for the Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis.The name stands for Genesis YM2612, since the file contains the data stream sent to the Yamaha YM2612 sound chip in the console. The data is logged to a file through the use of emulators running a ROM image.The GYM format first appeared on...
, HES, KSS, NSF, NSFE, SAP, SPC, VGM, VGZ, VTX - PlayStation Audio: PSF1 and PSF2
- Nintendo DS Sound Format: 2SF
- Ad-lib chiptunes via AdPlug library
- WAV formats provided by sndfile plugin.
- MIDI via native OS synthesizer control or TiMidity.
- CD Audio
Plugins
Audacious owes a large portion of its functionality to plugins, including all codecs. More features are available via third-party plugins.Current versions of the Audacious core classify plugins as follows (some are low level and not user-visible at this time):
- Decoder plugins, which contain the actual codecs used for decoding content.
- Transport plugins, which are lowlevel and implemented by the VFS layer.
- General plugins, which provide user-added services to the player (such as sending tracks with AudioScrobbler)
- Output plugins, which provide the audio system backend of the player.
- Visualization plugins, which provide visualizations based on fast Fourier transformFast Fourier transformA fast Fourier transform is an efficient algorithm to compute the discrete Fourier transform and its inverse. "The FFT has been called the most important numerical algorithm of our lifetime ." There are many distinct FFT algorithms involving a wide range of mathematics, from simple...
s of the wave data. - Effect plugins, which provide various sound processing on the decoded audio stream
- Container plugins, which provide support for playlists and other similar structures.
- Lowlevel plugins, which provide miscellaneous services to the player core and are not categorized into any of the other plugins.
Skins
Audacious has full support for WinampWinamp
Winamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...
2 skins, and as of version 1.2, some free-form skinning is possible. Winamp .wsz skin files, a type of Zip archive, can be used directly, or can be unarchived to individual directories. The program can use Windows Bitmap (.bmp) graphics from the Winamp archive, although native skins for Linux are usually rendered in Portable Network Graphics (.png) format. Audacious 1.x allows the user to adjust the RGB color balance of any skin, effectively making a basic white skin equivalent to millions of skins of different hues.
Clients
Audacious is intended to be a media player and not a client (unlike XMMS2XMMS2
XMMS2 is a new generation of the XMMS audio player. It is a new design, written from scratch, separate from the XMMS codebase...
), though it supports the concept of other clients connecting to it, such as Conky
Conky (software)
Conky is a free software system monitor for the X Window System. It is available for Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. Conky is highly configurable and is able to monitor many system variables including the status of the CPU, memory, swap space, disk storage, temperatures, processes, network interfaces,...
.
Connection to Audacious for remote control can be done over plain DBus, by using an MPRIS-compatible client, or using the official Audtool utility created just for this purpose.
See also
- List of Linux audio software
- List of free software for audio